


The Spying Game

by MezzaMorta



Series: Quartet [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom John Watson, Bottom Sherlock Holmes, Boys In Love, Brotherly Love, Clothing abuse, Companionable Snark, Competitive Holmes Brothers, Consensual Kink, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Enema (non-graphic!), Erotic Electrostimulation, Erotic face slapping (consensual), Established Relationship, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Gags, Iceman Mycroft, John is a Horndog, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Mycroft IS the British Government, Nipple Clamps, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Riding Crop, Rimming, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sex Is Fun, Sexual Roleplay, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sloppy Seconds, Smoking, Spanking, Spies & Secret Agents, Spreader Bars, Switchy Mycroft, Top Greg Lestrade, Top Mycroft, Violet Wand, Voyeurism, verbal kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-19 00:19:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14863091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MezzaMorta/pseuds/MezzaMorta
Summary: John is too embarrassed to ask something, but Holmeses know everything, and have a Plan to help. A game is afoot, and the Iceman is not messing around. More roleplaying fun for the boys.





	1. Bait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The talky-talky before the hanky-panky. Plans are set in motion, but perhaps not everyone is playing a straight bat. Or a straight anything, really...

On the 221B sofa, John was glaring daggers over the top of his newspaper. And it wasn’t because of some twisted bit of reporting about NHS funding cuts like it usually was. It was because the same word had been uttered three times in a variety of differently aggravating tones, each from the same, singularly aggravating source.

"Myycroooft...?" cajoled Sherlock for the fourth time, in his most irritating sing-song voice, from his position on the floor, trying to twist himself into an obscene yoga position. 

Mycroft, sitting in what was still referred to as the 'client chair' - but which really ought to have been rechristened 'Mycroft's chair' by now - had valiantly ignored his brother all this time, but sighed and looked up from his first edition of Goethe; a defeated man, and not for the first time. 

“You whinged, Little Brother?” he enquired, dripping with irony.

"Shut up, Sherlock," said John, as casually as he was able with a clenched jaw. 

Sherlock shook his head, cheerily. "No, John, I won't. If you won't ask him, I will."

"I mean it - be quiet!" hissed the evidently tormented doctor. Mycroft noted the pinkening of his ear tips and suppressed an adoring smile. Something was up. But then, in this relationship, something always was, one way or another.

Sherlock flipped himself onto his back, bringing his legs over his head to rest on the floor. Classic autofellation pose. Oh, for the flexible spine of youth, mused Mycroft. Though he'd never been as flexible as  _that_. Somewhere in the Holmes genome, he was sure, there was feline DNA, and baby brother had gotten the best of it. The elder Holmes was lucky to get out of a chair without groaning these days.

"Mycie, John has something he wants to ask you," said Sherlock, factually, the teasing note turned down a notch and a hint of genuine frustration entering his voice. He nodded at John meaningfully, if awkwardly from underneath his own thighs, as if to say 'go on, you fool'.

John rolled his paper up and smacked it on the infuriating detective's helpfully exposed backside. "No, I don't! Seriously, shut it, mate. Sorry about this, Myc. Your brother's just being a dickhead, as per."

"Oi!" Sherlock brought himself back to sitting cross-legged on the floor, slapping at John's calf as he got up and passed by to get to the kitchen.

John made a great show of scooping up the laundry basket and fiddling with the washing machine, in the hope of seeming too busy to pester. 

Mycroft gave up on his book and set it to one side. "What's this?" he called, as mildly as possible, though he was intensely interested in whatever had gotten the usually easy-going John so clammed-up and fretful.

John turned as he heard the intake of breath, and caught the impertinent little glint in Sherlock's eyes as he opened his mouth to speak once again. He acted swiftly.

"John wants - ow, let go of my hair! Bloody Watson! Mmmmf!" Sherlock fought half-heartedly as he was barrelled into and wrestled onto his front by the stocky ex-army Captain. He always seemed to forget that he couldn't quite throw him off once the man got riled up. John's sporting skill gave him the upper hand in a physical tussle, sexual or otherwise. That, and the ton of lean muscle he was packing underneath his deceptively homely jumper.

Mycroft ignored the pleasant little melee in front of him. "Darling, you know you can ask me anything," he said, kindly.

"Yeah, course I know," said John, from his seated position on Sherlock's back, where he held a gangly arm in a vicelike grip with one hand, and covered his captive's mouth with the other. "Nothing to ask though. And if I did have something, I'd ask in my own bloody time, thanks." He gave Sherlock a little shove to emphasise his point. 

"Quite right. Lock, don't put words into John's mouth. Though, John, you can probably take your balled-up socks out of Lock's mouth now. I think you've subdued him enough."

Sherlock nodded in agreement.

John frowned and rolled off to one side. "Huh. Some people can't be too subdued."

"Pah! Eurgh, they're your sweaty rugby socks from last week!" cried an outraged Sherlock, spitting them out as John's hand fell away.

"Serve you right, you interfering little sod," countered John, triumphantly.

"All I was saying was... Ow! Mycie, don't you start! No need!” he squealed, as he was smacked by a broad hand. “Why does everyone think my bum's an off-switch?!"

Sherlock sensibly rolled onto his back to prevent further assault on his most tempting target. 

"Er, because it is?" said John, stating the obvious. 

Mycroft held up his smacking hand, placatingly. 

"If you don't want your backside smacked, keep your tongue behind your teeth, Sherlock Holmes. John doesn't want you to say whatever it was you were going to say. So don't say it."

Sherlock rose to his feet in a huff. He scuffed the floor with his foot and flopped down onto the sofa in disgust. "Fine! But you're both being stupid!"

"Leave us to our stupidity," said Mycroft, passively, and took up his book again.

"I bloody will! Stew in your ignorance, the pair of you. Rotten bastards," he muttered this last little sortie under his breath, knowing he was pushing his luck, but ever intent upon pushing it. 

Mycroft slammed his book closed again. "Language, please! I won't have the word ignorance bandied about."

Sherlock rallied and pointed at John in accusation. "He'll tell you eventually anyway! I was just trying to save time."

"It's not your time to save, actually, mate," said John, rearranging Sherlock's tangle of limbs until there was room for him to sit on the sofa as well. 

In spite of his irritation, Sherlock found himself unable to resist cuddling in to his infuriatingly word-shy flatmate.

"It's all my time! I'm the one who has to listen to you going on about it when he's not around. I'm fed up of you not telling him! Say sorry for the socks!" he demanded, sneaking this last request in at the end in hopes it would be mindlessly obeyed.

John smirked with provoking, almost Holmesian superciliousness. "Je ne regrette rien." 

Mycroft winced at the dreadful accent, and raised a curious brow. "Mm. We've gone from 'asking' me something, to 'telling' me something. Which is it, John, dear?"

"Nothing. It's nothing, Myc," said John, trying desperately to defuse the subject and get it dropped.

"Well, I'm sure whatever it is can wait. Can't it?" Mycroft queried with a slight tease, and for a moment it seemed as though John would crack. But Watsons are made of stern, stubborn stuff. Gregory always put it down to the Scottish blood, and he may well have been right. 

"Yeah. Or not. Whatever," said John, carelessly.

"Coward!" came an appalled hiss.

"Socks, Sherlock."

"Disgusting!" 

John sat up and ran his hands through his hair. "Look, your brother doesn't want to hear it, OK, just drop it."

Mycroft coughed politely. "Now who's putting words into other people's mouths, John? I gave no indication at all that I didn't want to hear...whatever it is."

Both Holmes brothers were gazing at him - one expectantly, the other balefully. John ignored both. He congratulated himself on being really quite good at it by now. Lestrade would have caved in minutes ago. 

"Look, I'm..." He shook his head, and rose to his feet, heaving Sherlock's dead-weight from his upper body. Sherlock whined and tutted, baffled as to why he was being disturbed from a perfectly comfortable slump. 

"Just forget it, OK? I'm going to collect my daughter from Mum's. No third degree necessary," said John, holding up his hands with finality.

Mycroft tilted his head and smiled at his discombobulated lover. "Certainly. It will be lovely to have a mature presence back in the flat. Happy to keep you company if you'd like. I can lurk round the corner. I think your mother is rather intimidated by me."

"Nah, think she fancies you, mate," said John, winking, causing the elder Holmes's cheeks to colour attractively. "She said, 'who's your well-dressed friend?' last time you came with me. Well-dressed is Mum-talk for 'tasty sort'. I told her you were my old Army pal, you know, helping out a single father in distress. Always a winner, that one. High-bred officer class written all over you."

"Yes, well...," Mycroft cleared his throat in embarrassment. Sherlock giggled behind his hand. 

"Aw, give Ma Watson what she wants, Mycie. You could be John's new stepdaddy. Be extra kinky when he fucks you, won't it?" He squeaked as he dodged the leather-bound German novel that came flying squarely towards his head.

"Ignore the lowest common denominator, John. Go and fetch back our Rose to raise the tone, won't you?"

"Shut up, Mycroft. Rosie's on my side anyway. I'm her favourite."

"You are  _not_. She pities her poor Uncle Lockie, The Family Imbecile. She prefers the sophisticated conversation of a man of the world. And anyone equipped with those awful pretend-cheese triangles I so heartily disapprove of."

John grinned, glad to be off the hook now Holmes had turned on Holmes. "Right. Back in an hour or so. Greg's home in a bit - Rosie's actual favourite. Let's not be at each other's throats when he arrives, boys."

"Oh, mustn't upset Big Bad Greg, must we?" said Sherlock, dripping with sarcasm.

"Not if you want to sit down to eat dinner, no," said John, truthfully. 

"See you later, darling," said Mycroft, reasonably, waving him off. 

"Don't step in any dog shit on the way, Watson," Sherlock grumbled to his lover's back. 

John gave not a single backwards glance. "Piss off, Little Holmes!" he called, merrily. 

"Don't you call me that!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet. Then, “Oh, he's gone," as the door slammed in his face.

Sherlock turned to his brother, aghast.

"See?!" he exclaimed, holding a despairing hand out towards where John had almost, very nearly, just flounced out in pseudo-Holmesian high dudgeon. Sherlock did not appreciate having his best moves stolen.

Mycroft crossed his legs, steepled his hands under his chin, and looked grimly into the distance like a particularly pensive hawk.

"Hmm. I do see, brother mine."

“Not good, is it?"

Mycroft considered the diagnosis. "Well, it's...unusual, certainly.”

Sherlock slapped his hands on his knees as he sat back down on the sofa.

"This is exactly what I've been telling you! He never has trouble asking for stuff, but this has got him all..."

"Embarrassed, dearest,” said Mycroft, helpfully, coming to sit next to his brother, stroking idly at his thigh.

Sherlock clicked his fingers. "Yeah, that's the one."

Mycroft shook his head slightly to himself, wondering at this odd circumstance.

"John Watson, embarrassed. It's rather a novelty." 

It was indeed. John Watson; the horniest, most rampant, most utterly disgusting doctor ever to walk the wards of a National Health Service training hospital. The most sexually adventurous GP yet to be struck off. The ex-army Captain who put entire Regiments of Her Majesty’s randiest squaddies to shame with his bunny-like capacity for bonking. The sensible metropolitan father who would perform any sexual act you liked, provided it came with a cup of tea afterwards, and as long as it involved at least one Holmes or a member of the Establishment - but preferably three blokes with equally insatiable appetites for a bout of sweaty mattress trampolining. John Hamish Watson was embarrassed. And it was very disconcerting.

"It's downright unsettling and I don't like it one bit!" complained Sherlock, adopting his usual effective strategy of moaning about something until someone did something about it. Though, usually, that someone was himself.

"Embarrassed because of me?" queried Mycroft, perplexed.

"Yes!” cried his brother, impatiently. “Because he's an idiot. And so are you for not noticing sooner. God, I have to do _everything_ round here!"

“Well, I could see he was holding something back, but I don’t go straight into ‘nagging to death’ mode to obtain my information. You really should have let him tell me, you know.”

Sherlock gave a contemptuous grunt, while the elder Holmes ran through the only possibilities that made sense of the situation. Sherlock noted the quizzical eyebrow of a Mycroft in deep contemplation.

"He imagines I'll refuse him? Or, what, laugh at him?"

"Exactly! He thinks you'll find it too close to home, or too disrespectful. I told him not to give a toss about that!" said Sherlock, disgusted at normal people’s pedestrian sensibilities. Sometimes he wondered what the world would be like if everyone behaved more like him. He wondered. And then he shuddered, chilled to the marrow: six billion people with no boundaries, all trying to outwit each other, compulsively masturbating, with the occasional violin solo thrown in for variation. The end of civilisation.

Mycroft snorted with a distinct lack of dignity. "Of course you did, dear."

Sherlock ignored him. "He said it was only a stupid immature fantasy anyway, and Mycroft Holmes would find it offensive and roll his eyes, and then he'd feel like a total dickhead!"

"Oh, the sweetheart. I... I've never done that before, have I? Not about this kind of thing,” Mycroft asked, doubtfully. He scanned his memory for any indication he might have given to John that he was unapproachable on this particular matter.

"Not to him, you haven’t,” replied Sherlock. “You do it to me all the time. Not that it stops me."

"That's because you're incorrigible," said Mycroft, in what he hoped was a stern and discouraging manner, but which emanated pride from every pore.

Sherlock grinned and budged up to lean comfortably against his brother.

"But John's corrigible, Mycie. At least, when it comes to you."

Mycroft winced at this butchery of vocabulary. "That's not a word, but I know what you mean. I do wonder why…" he pondered.

"Why it's not a word?"

"Why he's embarrassed about asking, dolt.”

"You make him go wobbly," said Sherlock, matter-of-factly.

Mycroft considered this, unable to disguise the flush of pleasure it caused. "He makes me go wobbly, come to that."

He propped his elbow on the back of the sofa, and flopped his hand over to idly play with the curls round his brother’s ear.

Sherlock smirked knowingly. "Yes, especially when he goes all Captain Watson. You practically scent-mark him. It's very unseemly of you.”

“Disgraceful,” agreed Mycroft, contentedly.

“And we all know our John's taste for the upper echelons. Takes after his mother, apparently. Loves it when I go all haughty and glacial. Remember when he fucked me over the dining table because I told him he holds his knife like a pen!” Sherlock gave a gleeful chuckle.

“Yes, that was one of our better brunches, wasn’t it?” said Mycroft, going glassy-eyed at this pleasant little family memory.

“And he goes ga-ga when you’re all gallant and courtly. Holding the bloody door open for him - as if you do it for any reason other than to gawp at his arse!”

Mycroft nodded without shame. “I have never claimed otherwise. It is well worth a gawp, that firm little sit-upon of his.”

“But,” said Sherlock, doggedly, “he goes extra specially giddy for your ghastly professional self, brother.”

“I see.”

“It's your eyebrows, I think. God, you both make me sick!" Sherlock sat up in disgust as he thought of this. Mycroft and Watson - a soppier pair of imbeciles not to be found this side of the Thames. Aside from Mycroft and Lestrade. And Lestrade and Watson. Where would they all be without the solid common sense of Sherlock Holmes to guide them through life?

Mycroft clipped his nuisance of a brother round the ear and received a dark Paddington Stare for his trouble. "Impudent child. What else did he say?"

Sherlock rubbed the back of his head, scowling. "Oh, what does he ever say? He's got a massive horn for the Iceman, that's what.”

"Really, now...?" said Mycroft, smiling delightedly, with not a little evil glint in his cool grey eyes. That John had a thing for a bit of posh was not precisely news, but it was lovely to hear that the Iceman in particular was a subject of his filthy fantasies.

Sherlock pretended to retch, in a rather vivid and convincing mime.

"Ugh, I knew it was a bad idea to tell you. Look at you, you're  _preening._ What does he see in you?!"

"I have never preened in my life.” One finely-groomed, threaded eyebrow lifted from its usual position and transformed the insouciant expression into one of professional archness.

“So…,” mused the elder Holmes, rubbing his chin with his hand. “Captain Watson wants to dally with the British Government, does he?”

“So it would seem,” sighed Sherlock, wearily, wishing he hadn’t mentioned it. "He said he didn't want you to think less of him for it, cos then he'd probably never be able to get a hard-on again,” said Sherlock, for the record. Though, frankly, he thought the idea of John Watson never being able to get a hard-on again was risible enough to headline the Royal Variety Performance.

Mycroft turned to his brother in disbelief. "He said what?!"

"I think he thought he was being funny. You must save him from his idiocy!" Sherlock slapped at his brother’s arm, urging him to solve this ridiculous problem.

Mycroft had already resolved to do so. "What are you giggling at, naughty Lockie?"

"The very idea!” tittered naughty Lockie. “John thinking you'd be offended about him wanting to play Spies!"

Mycroft suppressed a chuckle of his own.

"Poor darling. Don't tease him about it."

"Oh, but it's so easy!” laughed Sherlock, affectionately.

“And he definitely wants to be a little…challenged, does he? A little pushed? Wants it a bit...hard?”

Sherlock nodded “Yep. You know he likes it rough and ready.”

“I do recall something to that effect, as it happens. The last time Gregory ‘arrested’ him…”

Sherlock sighed happily. “Mm. Yeah. Getting it from you, though? Novelty factor. So please, put the silly sod out of his misery and stop him moping around being all secretive and weird. He’s freaking me out.”

“No problem there, if that’s what he wants. I shall be chilled steel. Though I couldn’t do it all the time, of course.”

“No, you like bending over and begging too much. Especially if it’s for Captain Watson, and most especially when it’s for Gregory Lestrade, the great, buggering brute,” teased Sherlock, accurately.

“And sometimes even for you, when you’re being sensible.”

“Or whenever you want me to render you insensible...,” said Sherlock in his husky bedroom voice.

Mycroft coughed discreetly and felt his cock twitch. “Quite.”

After a pause, during which they both contemplated a host of pleasantly vile and degrading images, Mycroft said, curiously, “Lock… Do they _all_ want to be Bond, do you think? These salt-of-the-earth men? Gregory’s got a Bond thing.” A horrid thought struck. “Oh, tell me John doesn’t want me to call him Bond, because, really, I just couldn’t!”

“Ugh. Bond. So unimaginative,” scoffed Sherlock. “No. He just wants to be a naughty spy, because apparently he’s nine years old.”

“Says the man in his late-thirties who still wants to be a pirate.”

“I _am_ a pirate!” insisted the outraged man in his late-thirties.

“Yes, darling. A very sweet and pretty one,” wheedled Mycroft in his come-hither-baby-boy voice. He slipped his hand up the scowling pirate’s thigh and rubbed at the crease of his groin. Sherlock steeled himself to resist this transparent attempt to get away with such an outrageous insult.

“Fearsome and dashing, thank you very much!" He gave his irksome brother a half-hearted shove. It really wasn’t fair that Mycroft played dirty, and was even now deftly undoing his trousers.

Sherlock whimpered in a very un-piratey way, much to his own fury.

“Mycie…no teasing,” he whined, slapping at his tormentor’s back. “We’re not talking about pirates, we’re talking about spies. For Johnny,” he added, to help puncture the randy onslaught. It worked. Mycroft retreated momentarily, glaring as if to say ‘we shall return to this, remember where we left off.’

The elder Holmes sat back, and folded his hands in his lap to avoid temptation. “All right. Tell me - what sort of spy does our John want to be?”

Sherlock swivelled round to face his brother, sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “Right. From what I can gather, his whole kink is a sort of cross between a 1940s prisoner of war film and a load of nonsense about the glamourous world of international intrigue, with fancy cars,” he said, with mild disapproval.

Mycroft shook his head, despairingly. “Which is really very un-glamourous and very un-intriguing most of the time. If only people knew. Some of the cars aren’t bad though. Fantasy and glamour it must be, I suppose. Anything for Johnny. I’ll happily frown at him from across a desk if it gets him going.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You just sitting at a desk gets him going. But, I mean, a slight breeze gets him going! Priapic little nympho,” he muttered, fondly.

“Even so. I suspect it will take more than frowning to crack Agent Watson...”

Sherlock was caught off-guard by the gravel in the insinuating, silky voice. He groaned in spite of his resolution not to let his dreadful, manipulative brother have the upper hand. The endeavour was as futile as always.

“Mmm,” hummed Mycroft, pouncing on his brother’s smooth, swanlike neck and worrying at it lightly with his teeth. “So, a nice raunchy little escapade beckons this weekend, my Lock? Spies and agents and the British Government…”

Sherlock panted as he was kissed from jaw to collarbone. He gave up willingly. "Mm-hm! You run this one, Mycie. I’ll allow it."

“Oh, will you? Much obliged, your lordship,” said a darkly grinning Mycroft. “I wonder what I can find to lend an air of authenticity…,” he pondered, between nibbles.

“Your interrogation lamp and your frowny eyebrows," giggled Sherlock, going all tingly.

"Hmm. Could be an opportunity to get the Merc out of the garage. John does so admire it."

Sherlock’s eyes went wide with sudden excitement and he pulled away from his brother's questing mouth. "Ooh, can I kidnap him in it?!"

"No, Lock! You'd end up putting him in the boot, not to mention the fact you can't drive," scolded Mycroft.

Sherlock was appalled by the suggestion. "Hmph. I can  _so_ drive! Why does no-one ever let me drive?!"

"You don't have a licence." 

Sherlock gasped.

"A gentleman would not have mentioned that, Mycroft Holmes! Licence, my foot. I'm excellent at driving. I always win at the traffic lights. And I wouldn't put John in the boot! Not unless he asked me to. I'm not unnecessarily cruel, unlike some landladies I could mention," he finished, darkly. 

"John’s not going to ask you anything. I’m recruiting Gregory to my cause. John’s not going to know anything until he accosts him with the old 'come along with me Agent Watson' business and escorts him to Hampstead."

"Where all the posh spies live. He'll just jizz in his pants straightaway, Mycroft,” said Sherlock, casually. “You won't get him halfway to Belsize Park before he's spaffed himself silly just thinking about it."

"Sherlock Holmes, don't be so revolting."

"You'll want me to be revolting at the weekend," he retorted, emphatically.

"True. I do have a role in mind for you, as it happens. I think you ought to be on his side. To make up for all your earlier vicious taunting. He’ll need an ally."

“Ah ha!” Sherlock pointed at his brother with a triumphant glint in his eye. “You just want to pit your wits against me and show off for them, don’t you?!”

Mycroft flushed a little. "And you don’t?”

“Well, durr, brother. But you won’t win.”

"You're not susceptible to the Iceman at all, then, no...?" said Mycroft, lightly, glancing askance.

"No. Well, yes, of course,” Sherlock admitted, and then frowned disapprovingly. “But I don't like him in the bedroom so much. I have to work with the cold-hearted git. I much prefer Mycie," he said, with sweet flirtation that made the object of it blush fetchingly.

"I concur. Wouldn't do for worlds to collide entirely. I need to retain the power of professional persuasion. Besides, it's hard enough as it is, controlling myself around you whenever you force me to haul you into my office or send chasers out to stop you doing something theatrical."

Sherlock giggled. "Ha. I know. I can see you just wishing you could punish me in front of the stuffed-shirts. But you can't, so there. Hard cheese, tough titty."

Mycroft gave up his attempt to quell his brother with a glare, and sighed melodramatically. "You never take my stern eyebrows seriously. It’s really quite devastating. You know, if you just took them as due warning, you’d have saved yourself a lot of spankings over the years, Lockie.”

Sherlock cringed at the s-word, as he always did, but patted his brother’s hand in sympathy. "Stern eyebrows don’t work on me like they work on John. You've overplayed them with me, brother. I'm impervious," he lied, almost convincingly.

"To my eyebrows, perhaps. Not to my hands, though,” murmured Mycroft, slinking one up his little brother’s long, lanky thigh once again. It snaked into his fly and caressed the rapidly stiffening cock through his pants.

Sherlock shivered deliciously. "Ooh... Hands..."

"Not to the Voice...,” said Mycroft, dropping into the depths of sultriness, to the exact vibration of soundwave that made his brother's cock ache and something tingle deep inside his arse. All thoughts of spies and cars and Icemen left his head.

Sherlock’s head dropped back onto the sofa in helpless arousal. "Mm...Mycie...,” he moaned, thrusting his hips into the air.

Mycroft quickly shoved his brother onto his back, and pulled his trousers and pants down to his ankles. He watched in satisfaction as Sherlock writhed and squirmed, legs spreading by instinct. His long, smooth prick jutted up from the neat, dark curls at his groin, the head already glistening with wetness. "Not indifferent to my tongue, are you...," crooned the elder Holmes, provocatively.

"Oh, fuck..." Sherlock groaned and brought one arm over his eyes, while the other hand desperately gripped and released the backrest of the sofa.

"Not to my, er...,” Mycroft hesitated for a microsecond, and Sherlock jumped in impatiently.

"Cock, just say cock, Mycroft, get it over with!”

" _Cock_ ,” he pronounced with perfect elocution. “Not impervious to my cock. Quite pervious to it, in fact. Such a penetrable little thing, you are…," he husked, undoing his own trousers and underwear, slipping them to mid-thigh. His own rampant prick sprang to his stomach, and Sherlock hastily propped himself up on his elbows to get a good look at it.

He licked his lips and grinned crookedly. "Mm. Yummy."

Mycroft regarded the rogue organ with curiosity as he masturbated, biting his lip in concentration as he teased the tip for his brother’s viewing pleasure.

"Is it, baby boy?” he said, with faux innocence, looking into the wide, hungry eyes that seemed to devour him. “Is it _very_ yummy? Will Johnny think it's yummy too?"

Sherlock nodded, frantically. "May I taste it and see?"

"Oh yes, dearest, you may. But first…”

Mycroft smirked and swiftly twisted the bare legs to one side, to encourage Sherlock over onto this front. Sherlock eagerly complied, kicking his trousers off on the way. He gazed over his shoulder through lowered lashed as he turned over, arranging his sylphlike body with self-conscious, submissive eroticism.

Mycroft dispensed with his own trousers, and, placing one foot on the floor, came to loom over his half-naked brother’s prone form. Sherlock humped into the sofa cushions a little, arching his back and raising his hips to display his simply edible bottom to its best advantage.

Mycroft suppressed a lustful whimper and tried to maintain his composure as he pushed his brother's shirttails up to the small of his back, to further bare the object of his deepest desires. He leant to rub his face across Sherlock’s peachy arse as it quivered beneath him. He groaned against the soft flesh, nosing at the cleft, his mouth watering in anticipation of taste. Sherlock moaned as the vibration and warm air, so tantalisingly close to the epicentre of him, sent his need skyrocketing. “Mycie…,” he protested weakly, “pleeease…”

Rapt in their erotic trance, each man only dimly registered the creak on the stairs and promptly ignored it.

Mycroft parted the wobbling globes before him with firm hands and regarded the cutely twitching rosebud within. “Mm. Yummy indeed,” he purred. “Want to taste my delicious little Lockie, and his delicious, tight little...” He plunged his face to his target, his voice muffled by the swell of his brother’s soft flesh.

"Oooh… Oh, hello Greg!" said Sherlock with a cheerful yelp. He looked up with a cheeky grin as the door opened to reveal their other lover.

Without missing a beat, Mycroft raised a hand in welcome, and continued to lick and bite at his brother’s pert backside. His tongue made an entrance just as Lestrade did, and Sherlock yowled.

“Hello, darling,” said Mycroft, between panting breaths and wet kisses.

Greg stood in the doorway with folded his arms, and a very unsurprised, tolerant look on his face, undercut by a smoulder in his deep brown eyes.

“How do,” he said, striving for casualness. “Excuse me interrupting, lads. Never know what you’re going to find behind this door, do you? Gotta say, I prefer this to the rotting badger dissection I walked in on last week.”

He took his trench coat off and folded it over the back of the client chair, before taking a seat to face this tempting little vignette - the Holmes boys, bare from the waist down, apart from their socks, indulging their oral and anal fixations simultaneously. A lovely homecoming.

“How was work, dear?” said Mycroft, conversationally, turning his head to the side. He momentarily ignored the thrusting of Sherlock’s hips, and gave one bouncing buttock a little spank of reproof.

Sherlock cast a wicked sidelong look of his own at their older lover, who was leaning back in his chair, staring with a slightly glazed expression, as though at something particularly juicy on a pay-per-view channel.

Something clicked in Greg’s brain. His face fell slightly. “Oh, shit,” he said, ominously.

“Oh, shit what?” said Sherlock, puzzled.

Greg nodded to himself with grim certainty. “There’s a Plan.”

“Whatever do you mean, Gregory?” said Mycroft, unknowingly, placing teasing little pecks to the impatiently wiggling bottom beneath him.

That seemed to confirm Greg’s theory. His deductive powers, while not Holmesian, were very finely attuned to Holmes-based mischief.

“There is, isn’t there? There’s a Plan. You’ve been plotting, and turning each other on, and now you’re celebrating, because there’s a Plan. It’s not against me, is it?” he almost whined. “I’m not sure it’s medically advisable for my ticker.”

Mycroft sat up a little, and Sherlock whimpered at having his bottom so abruptly abandoned.

“Don’t be absurd, Gregory. Our Plans are never _against_ anyone.”

Sherlock grumbled and shifted to lie on his side. “Unless they’ve really pissed us off.”

Mycroft spooned up behind him so that they both faced Greg, who was now undoing his trousers with a perfunctory lack of finesse.

“I’ve been a bloody saint, lately!” protested the D.I., mostly at their youngest lover. “Barely lost my temper once this fortnight. Missed darts last Wednesday to write all those fiddly labels for your microbial samples. And I took the bins out. No, wait, I always take the sodding bins out.”

“We save them for you,” said Sherlock, pleasantly.

Greg looked pleadingly at them. “I don’t deserve a Plan.” Then he tried a different tactic just for good measure. “I’m not worthy of your brilliance. Don’t waste valuable thinking time on ways to wind me up, I beg you.”

Mycroft propped his head on Sherlock’s upper arm and gazed at him with some concern. “Gregory, you are showing worrying signs of paranoia. Our little…scheme, is directed towards John, and is entirely benevolent. Well, mostly.”

Greg breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, Watson’s getting a Plan? Oh, thank fuck for that. Good. What are we doing to the poor bastard?”

“It’s Spies, Gregory,” smirked Mycroft.

The D.I.’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, like Bond?!”

“No, not like bloody Bond!” scoffed Sherlock, appalled.

“All right, keep your knickers on. Oh, wait, no, they’re over there already. Fine. Not Bond. Just ordinary spies. Who am I, then?”

“The Iceman’s dirty henchman,” said Mycroft, quirking a flirtatious brow at him over Sherlock’s head.

Greg considered this with evident satisfaction. “I’m the muscle, you mean?”

“If you don’t mind being typecast, dear.”

“Nope. Just happy to contribute, me. So am I being recruited?”

Mycroft nodded. “Of course.”

“Do it properly, then,” said Greg, with a mucky leer.

“I beg your pardon?”

Greg grinned and pushed his trousers down. “If you’re recruiting me, I want it done proper.”

Sherlock whimpered as Greg’s cock heaved into view, and he wiggled back onto Mycroft, trying to get some friction. Mycroft took the hint and humped a little against the insistent backside.

“Ah,” said Mycroft, breathing a little heavily. “You want the tap on the shoulder, the newspaper slipped under the door? The cryptic phonecall?”

“Well, a bit of flattery and such. Convince me to come onside, Holmes,” said Greg, wanking himself in time to their frotting. Sherlock licked his lips and brought his hand round to his own cock, mirroring Greg’s actions. 

“Yes. We shall inveigle you, Gregory…,” said Mycroft, distractedly.

Greg grinned. “Ooh, sounds kinky. Wouldn't mind being taken out for a nice dinner later, either."

"Whatever turns you on, Lestrade," snorted Sherlock.

"Oi. Cheek."

"I shall wine and dine you all when our rogue Agent returns, my dears. Keep our little compact strictly hush-hush, though, yes? We shall discuss out of his earshot."

"Fine. Moscow Rules and all that. But first, why don’t you both lose the rest of your kit and crawl over here like good boys,” suggested Greg, biting his lip in provocation.

They scrambled to comply, and shed the rest of their clothes before slowing and deliberately making their way on all fours like prowling leopards towards their demanding lover. Greg held his cock out to them, with an air of great generosity.

“Fight over it,” he ordered, with a wonderfully arrogant smirk, which made both Holmeses practically trip over their tongues. “I want winning over to your cause.”

“Hardly a high price to pay for your cooperation, dear,” said Mycroft, faintly, gazing up at Greg’s impressive erection with bare-faced want.

“I should hope not. But a bloke likes to feel like a prize sometimes.”

"You are a prize, Gregory,” said Mycroft, as Greg’s hand came to grip the top of his hair. Next to him, Sherlock moaned as a feral Greg wrapped his dark curls round one meaty fist.

"A great, big, huge prize,” said Sherlock, admiringly, going a bit cross-eyed as he stared at it. “And I'm going to win it."

Greg dragged them forward to his crotch, and together they nuzzled and licked and tried to possess his cock, competing with each other to see who could render the man most incoherent; who could rip the highest pitched moan from him; who could make him say the most obscene swear word as they laved at him with eager tongues, and took polite turns to suck up and down his full length. They kissed each other round his shaft and over the top of his swollen tip, displaying their mutual desire for his delectation, rubbing his precome between their mouths and adding to it with their spit.

When they felt him about to come, Sherlock made his move. He slipped his entire wide mouth round the end of his lover’s pulsing hardness, and took it all. Mycroft nudged at his brother with his head, and they shared what he had won in a passionate, sloppy kiss, as Greg groaned and swore in delight.

“Yeah, all right,” he panted. “I’ll be your dirty henchman. Bloody hell. Think Agent Watson’s in trouble”

Sherlock smiled around his brother’s sticky mouth as they snogged, and began to cogitate an idea which had emerged the instant Mycroft took the bait of the spying game.

_Think I may go on a little recruitment drive myself, Lestrade. What’s a game of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, without a bit of double-crossing? Agent Watson may be in trouble. But the Iceman is going down._


	2. Switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An approach is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Splitting this into shorter chapters. It does have a plot, honest Guv! And there will be bonking, double swear. A little bit of linking dialogue. x

The illicit approach was made the following day. Two completely anonymous men met at a bus stop in Lambeth.

“Would you like to be on my side?” said the dark, brooding Belstaff from behind a newspaper.

The brown trench coat looked at him with interest and ducked his silver head.

“Do I detect from your tone that you might be trying to persuade me to some kind of double-cross? A duplicitous bit of betrayal against my employer? Because if you are, the answer is categorically yes.”

“Wondered if you’d be interested in a little side Plan.”

“Thoughtful lad you are, when you put your mind to it. What d'you need?”

“Nothing insidious, Inspector. Merely the disabling of a few cameras at an address in Hampstead.”

“Me? Disabling cameras?”

“I’ve written out the instructions. Here. Idiot-proof.”

“Ta very much. Why can’t you do it?”

“Much less suspicious if you drop round on some pretext. I’ll get slung out on my ear. Tell M you need to pick his brains about a potential terror suspect, or even that you missed him so very much and just _had_ to see him. His ego is susceptible to pandering.”

“Runs in the family.”

“Ignoring you. Just get in, distract him, excuse yourself, hit this sequence of switches in his control room, and insert this memory stick. Then get him out of the house tonight. Child’s play.”

“I hate to ask, but what are you up to?” 

“Nothing the Iceman can’t handle.”

“Seriously, love, you will regret it if you’re embroiling me in something awful.”

“Not awful. Just a little stress test. A harmless prank, if you will. Entertainment purposes only.”

“No permanent consequences or damage? Because if there is, retribution will be swift.”

“Nothing of any consequence whatsoever. All for the greater good, I swear it. Come on, Lestrade, you never get to misbehave, do you? Let your hair down.”

“Will you make it worth my while, then? Working against the boss from within?”

“What would you consider worth your while?”

“Bit of good behaviour wouldn’t go amiss, but I know it’s a lost cause. Take the bins out?”

“No deal. Take me back to your place and fuck me in as many positions as you can think of? I'm pre-lubed.”

“One of these days, you little reprobate, that line is not going to work for you. When hell freezes over or I finally burst a gasket and can’t get it up anymore...”

“Pfft, as if. Anyway, I know someone who can cook you up a super-strength medicinal cocktail for that sort of thing.”

“Do you now? Care to share their details?”

“Er… No. No. Forget I said that. I was lying. I don’t have any such connections.”

“Better not. Better not ever get back to me that you’re involved in anything medicinal at all, or you will need super-strength bloody medicated lotion if you ever want to sit comfortably on a flat surface ever again.”

“Got it.”

“Now about this persuading me thing… "

"It's called turning. I'm turning you."

"I turned a long time ago, darl. Now, let’s leave this bloody bus stop before I go from being a warm lead to a cold contact.”

"Come along, then, Inspector. Or should I say Defector?"

"Bloody hell, and you say _my_ jokes are crap!"


	3. Hook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agent Watson is caught. The Iceman Cometh.

John Watson was having a shit day. Not just any shit day, but the ultimate shit day – a Saturday spent in IKEA. 

A bookcase had mysteriously fallen over in 221B, presumably under the collective weight of anatomy text books and glass jars full of pickled organs. Demands had been made that it be replaced instantly. Very whiny, loud, nagging demands. He had no choice but to comply. Greg was going to accompany him, but chickened out at the last minute, citing some pathetic excuse about needing to go to the dry cleaners. John was unimpressed, and muttered grumpy epithets to himself as he lugged an unwieldy cardboard box full of MDF and missing screws up the stairs.

“All the cash in the Holmes vaults and he wants a bloody Billy bookcase! Still got to put the fucking thing up. Won’t get any help with that either…,” he groused.

As soon as he stepped through the door, however, he knew his weekend was about to make substantial improvements.

The place was dark, except for one small desk lamp. A shadowy figure lurked behind it. John might have jumped, had the mystery intruder not been instantly recognisable as a man he’d been shagging for the last few years.

“John Watson, I presume?” said a gravelly voice, with a London accent. Working class. Bit on the rough side. It meant business.

“Er. Yeah. And you are?” he enquired, casually, refusing to be cowed in his own living room.

The man seemed mildly disappointed at not having caused even a little scare as he emerged from the shadows. John assessed his appearance, slipping instantly into the role he absolutely had no doubt he was going to be playing tonight.

Average height. Silvering hair. Dark eyebrows. Nice black suit, no tie. Every inch the hired man. Ex-gangster type. Bit dangerous.

_So that’s why he hasn’t shaved the last couple of days. Growing a bit of hitman stubble. Suits him._

“Don’t worry about who I am,” said the mystery man, with a falsely soothing tone. “But I think you know my boss as M.”

_Oh, fucking yes!_

John shrugged carelessly. “Never heard of him. Nice bloke?”

“Not really. You’ll be making his acquaintance soon. You’re to come with me. Don’t worry, your child has been moved to a safehouse. Well, safe flat below. She’s quite well.”

John hid his smile. Good old Mrs H again. _Must give her a bit more rent money this month._ “I see,” he said, blandly. “Thanks. And this M of yours…wants to see me, why?”

Greg shrugged and began stalking round the living room with an air of proprietorial menace, picking up this and that, then shoving his hands in his pockets. “Don’t ask me, mate. I’m just the muscle. Perhaps you’ve been a naughty boy. Perhaps you’ve crossed the wrong man,” he said, throwing in a little dramatic turn for effect.

“Perhaps I have. What if I don’t comply?” asked John, calmly, coming round to confront the intruder. The light from the desk lamp threw their faces into relief.

The man replied in a hushed, confidential tone, an ironic smirk on his handsome face.

“Things might get nasty.”

“Sounds like they might get nastier if I let you haul me off,” he said, chucking in a bit of flirtatious eyebrow.

The stranger took a provocative step towards John, until they were mere inches apart. John felt a stir below the belt and steeled himself to ignore it. Good secret agents don’t get hard-ons this early in the game. He glanced down at his assailant’s telltale bulging crotch. Thank goodness it wasn’t just him.

“Might do. Might not. Only one way to find out,” said the man, tauntingly. Then with a meaningful smirk, “There’s a ride in a nice Mercedes in it for you,”

John’s heart leapt. “Woah, shit! The Merc’s out?” he blurted, in spite of his resolution to play it cool.

The hired muscle snorted and looked at him with inappropriate affection.

“Yeah, thought that might interest you.”

John suppressed a giggle.

“Well, now you’re talking. Come on. Mustn’t keep the boss waiting,” said John, cheerfully. He headed towards the door and double-backed a little as he noticed the state he was in.

“Erm… I’m a bit, like, sweaty. Any chance of a quick shower first?”

The man in black shook his head, definitively. “Nope.”

John was surprised. “Oh.”

“He won’t mind you in your natural state. Better that way. Got a change of clothes for you in the car. Agent Watson.” The man pronounced the name with dark, deliberate huskiness, and Agent Watson’s stomach flipped over in spite of himself.

John looked at Greg knowingly and shook his head with something like anticipation and disbelief.

“Oh, fucking hell.”

Greg grinned, his pointy canines showing in the dark. “Problem?” he queried. Just checking.

John shrugged, squared his shoulder and raised his jaw in defiance. He pulled his spine ramrod straight and stood to attention, like the well-trained soldier he was. Now was not the time to go weak at the knees. Now was the time to resist. Resist, rebel and play the game. For Queen and country.

“You’ll never break me, you bastards, you know that, don’t you?” he said, defiantly, adopting his Captain’s voice and his Doctor’s accent. A little harder, a little more-well-to-do than usual. Cool and unflappable; with something of 1950s Richard Attenborough in it for good measure.

“We’re gonna give it a go, though, mate,” said the hard-bitten thug, ominously.

The Agent cocked an unruffled eyebrow and smiled, sardonically. “I’d expect nothing less. Not of the Iceman.”

Both men stifled some very immature, out-of-place giggling on their way out.

The Merc was parked round the corner. A slinky ghost-grey number - AMG s65 saloon - that made John’s hand itch for both the car’s gearstick and the one in his pants.

_Phwoar, what a motor._

He was semi-bundled into the back of it by two firm hands. The man gave him a shove and a sneaky but firm slap on the arse as he pushed him in. John took a moment to appreciate the supple beige leather and walnut interior of his absolute favourite of - what he liked think of as - ‘the Holmesmobiles’. Not that he’d ever say that out loud.

On the back seat was a black holdall containing the clothing he was evidently supposed to change into. A pair of hardwearing black combat trousers. A white t-shirt vest. And nothing else. He caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror with a querying look. The man nodded in confirmation, and he put them on, no undies, wiggling awkwardly while the car rolled through the London night.

“Side pocket,” directed the man at the wheel, when they stopped at the lights. The Agent rummaged and extracted a black blindfold from the bag. He chuckled softly to himself. _Nice touch._

“Put it on,” ordered his captor. “Tight. No cheating, now, Agent Watson. Gentleman’s agreement, yeah?”

“What makes you think I’m a gentleman…what was your name again?”

“Never said. And I know you won’t cheat. Where’s the fun in that?”

John gave his best Sherlockian snort of contempt, and tied the blindfold round his eyes so that his world plunged into darkness.

They drove in silence to what John knew – or at least, was pretty certain - was a not-unfamiliar HQ in a nice leafy street in Hampstead. Not much chance this game would be taken outside the confines of a tightly-controlled area. Not if he knew the Iceman. And, let’s face it - he did.

The car pulled up on a gravel drive. The security gate clanked closed behind them. The burly driver got out and came around to the back, opened the door, and roughly yanked the captive spy out by the back of his neck. John was suddenly pressed to the firm, hard body of the hired goon.

“All right, love?” whispered Greg, in his normal voice, letting his neck go. As though John might be harbouring doubts that it really was him. He gave John a quick, unauthorised peck on the lips and wrapped his arms round his waist to caress his arse.

John gave an appreciative little hum at the feeling of beard bristles on his cheek.

“Nah, mate, take me home, I’ve got a bookcase to put up. Yeah, course!” he chuckled, pressing his hard-on up against the other man’s leg. He heard Greg chortle in return.

“Got to check, haven’t I? If it gets a bit much in there, your word is ‘Martini’, all right? If you forget, just say Red as usual.”

This was sounding more promising by the second. All the nasty little things he’d divulged privately to Sherlock seemed to be about to be made manifest. One of his better ideas, this. Driving Sherlock nuts for weeks on end, describing his innermost fantasies and swearing him to absolute secrecy. Mycroft putting on a show because he’d played all coy and embarrassed and Watsonish. Getting exactly what he wanted without having to ask, and giving the Holmeses something to collaborate on. All had gone spectacularly to plan. Safeword and everything.

“Ooh, might need it, do you reckon?” asked John, not bother to disguise his eagerness.

“Have to see. Now shut it, you. The boss is waiting,” said Greg, back in character. He placed John in a slightly gentler arrest hold than he’d use in his normal working environment, and John let himself be dragged to the house. From their movements and direction, he could tell they were going round the back. _Interesting._

Once inside, he felt himself shoved and manoeuvred down corridors, the strong arms guiding him, turning them back on themselves a bit for added disorientation. Greg kept a firm grip of him to stop him falling, and when they reached a flight of descending stone stairs, the very considerate hired ruffian went first, guiding the Agent down carefully and making him hold the rail.

John tried to switch off the part of his brain that wanted to second-guess everything, and just focused in on the moment. He tried to forget that he knew they were going into the wine cellar, and instead used a bit of Method to convince himself he was the captured spy he was purporting to be. His heart raced at the thrill of the sort-of-unknown, his adrenaline kicked higher in anticipation of a good night’s roleplay and rogering, and he forced himself to breathe a little faster to stimulate a mild fear response. Being blindfolded made him mildly claustrophobic, but it was bearable in small doses and he enjoyed the challenge. This was still slightly risky territory, and he knew he could let himself go into a panic attack if he over-thought it or got too lost in it.

Greg’s hand on his arm, and his familiar scent kept him grounded. Not a genuine fight or flight situation, he told himself. Just fight (ish) and fuck.

He would need to get the blindfold off soon, and he squeezed Greg’s arm to try and communicate that.

“Nearly there, mate,” said Greg, gruffly, squeezing back.

When they hit the bottom of the stairs, the blindfold was whipped off and he blinked his vision back into focus against the bright light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The air was chill and damp down here; a little musty with age.

It was Mycroft’s wine cellar. But it wasn’t.

Space had been cleared, sheets had been thrown over the casks and bottle racks. A few bundles of old blankets and oily rags adorned one corner. A rickety chair stood in the centre of the underground room with its stone walls. A small desk faced it, with its own chair, a single desk lamp, facing outwards, and a cup and saucer. On the other side of the room lay an old mattress and a bucket. Otherwise, it was empty.

John turned defiantly towards his handler.

“Your boss not into warm welcomes?” he sneered.

Greg gave him a brief and subtle check over, then curled his lip in disgust. “Won’t be wisecracking when he’s done with you, cocky little son of a bitch. Sit.”

He shoved John into the chair, and swiftly pinned his wrists behind him. John wiggled and gave the appearance of resistance, and then actually resisted when Greg pulled him tighter and forced him to lean back, using his true strength and John’s own bodyweight for leverage. John snarled as his arms were pinioned and tied to the back of the chair with a length of rope drawn from the thug’s jacket pocket.

“Don’t struggle, son,” said the hostage-taker, harshly. “No fucking point.” The Agent heartily agreed.

Greg stayed behind him, out of his field of vision, and leaned forward to clamp one of John’s eartips between his teeth. John shivered as he felt the other man’s harsh breathing up close.

“You’re a tasty piece, you,” snarled Greg, convincingly. “When he’s done with you, he said I can have you. And I will,” he promised. “What’s left of you.”

John groaned, and as he did so, something was shoved into his mouth. John made protesting noises against the intrusion, which he immediately and hysterically recognised as a pair of his own dirty rugby socks tied into a makeshift gag.

Greg came around to check his victim could still breathe, and they shared an amused glare.

“Mmmf mfff urrrgh!” shouted Agent Watson.

“Yeah, mate. You would say that, wouldn’t you?” quipped the stubbly stranger, thinking he was funny.

He smirked and left the room, without a backwards glance, leaving the lights on. Plunging Captain John Watson into sudden darkness in a closed cellar was not something that counted as kinky fun. That was just mean.

John sat on his own in silence for quite a bit longer than he was expecting. He wriggled and tested his bonds, finding them pretty solid. He whiled away the time, rocking the chair, shaking his head from side to side, wondering if he could escape if he really wanted to. Just about, he thought. But it would take a while.

He had the distinct sense he was being watched and looked around for one of Mycroft’s cameras, but they were, of course, hidden.

Then, suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs creaked slowly open.

His earlier silver-haired acquaintance stomped down the stairs, and John made sure to glare at him hatefully. Then another set of steps - light, slow, deliberate - followed. Expensive leather soles made a delicate click on the hard stone floor, and John looked up to see his adversary enter - resplendent in his finest charcoal-black pinstripe three-piecer; complete with blood red silk tie, tie pin, collar studs, gold watch fob and chain, matching silk handkerchief poking neatly from his top pocket, and shiny black brogues on his feet. His hair, shorter than when John had last seen it, was oiled and immaculately styled, showing darker than the all-too-familiar auburn. Even his eyebrows seemed a little more pronounced than usual. 

Agent Watson made a little squeak from behind his socks, and his cock stood to attention as if on command. Mycroft Holmes knew how to hold a room.

Of all the things his antagonist wore, it was the expression on his face that was most arousing of all. A fixed mask of ruthless self-assurance, arrogance, dark intent and utterly professional composure; simply oozing omniscience and quiet danger. He was impeccable, and he was gorgeous.

_The Iceman Cometh indeed._

John shivered and choked down the undignified moan that threatened to burst from his gagged mouth.

The Iceman swept in, and John caught a waft of an unfamiliar eau de cologne - woody and musky. This man didn’t look like the one he so regularly buggered into oblivion, and he didn’t smell like him either. He projected the cool detachment and threatening aura of the person he’d first met inside a black government car, back when he was being tested for loyalty and soundness as a suitable match for baby brother, all those years ago.

_Attention to detail. Atta boy, Mycie._

‘M’ barely looked at his hostage, and simply sat propped against the small desk opposite. Silence, punctuated only by dripping water somewhere, filled the cellar. John sensed Greg behind him, but couldn’t see that he was standing, hands behind his back, awaiting orders.

Mycroft examined his fingernails, frowning at some tiny flaw in his manicure.

"Ah,” he said, in a bored voice. “This is where they've put you, is it?"

_He’s being a Bond villain for me. Aw. Bless._

John made an incoherent sound against his gag. The Iceman feigned surprise.

“Oh, dear, someone seems to have put a pair of old socks into your mouth. My colleague, perhaps? Tut-tut, Lestrade. Most egregious. Remove them, please,” he ordered. The heavy did so without a word.

John jerked and thrashed, as though to attack him, though utterly in vain.

“Calm yourself, Agent Watson. You’ll do yourself a mischief,” said the Iceman, magnanimously.

John snorted with disgust. "Don't much care for your hospitality."

"What a shame you have no choice but to accept it," said the dark, silky voice.

John rallied and strained against his restraints. "If I weren't tied to this chair, you smug bastard, I'd..."

"Alas, we shall never know what you would or would not do, as I have no intention of letting you slip the net again,” crooned Mycroft, standing up and walking slowly over to his captive.

"My people will come looking for me!” shouted John, getting into his stride.

"But will they find you? And in one whole piece?"

"You don't frighten me, ‘M’, is it? Or should I say, _Holmes_?"

Mycroft nodded, generously. “You may call me whatever you like, dear boy. And I have no wish to frighten you. At least, not quite yet.”

“Do your worst. Don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“No?”

John opened his mouth to riposte but was cut off by an abrupt, animated hiss from the other man, who turned towards him with sudden vehemence. 

"Did you think you wouldn't be caught?!"

John turned his head away, rebelliously.

"I'll give name, rank and number only," he said, uncooperatively, with clipped, military precision.

Mycroft gave a sarcastic bark of laughter and waved his hand, dismissively. "You had better do so, then." 

"Watson, Captain. 24601,” said John, trying to chip the façade early on in the game. But cheap references to a secret shared love of musical theatre were apparently not going to wash with the Iceman today.

He raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "What an unfortunately  _miserable_  number."

John sniffed. "Dunno what you mean."

Mycroft dipped into his inside pocket. "Mm. Cigarette, Captain?" he said, in a disingenuously kind tone, offering one from a gold case.

"Yeah. I don't usually. Thanks," said John, taking one between his lips. It was lit from a match held by Greg, and he puffed away at it with rakish pleasure. The nicotine hit his bloodstream quickly and gave him a wonderful headrush. Greg came up beside him, relieved him of the cigarette, and took a drag of his own. He placed it back against John’s lips, let him toke it again, and brought it back to his own mouth once more.

John watched helplessly as Mycroft lit his own cigarette from the glowing ember of the other, while it was still in Greg’s mouth. He gulped in lust at this intimate bit of erotic by-play. So nearly a kiss. So somehow deviant. Of all his fetishes, the smoking kink was the most unhealthy, he knew. But he felt no guilt about it whatsoever. _Bad Doctor._

The Iceman gazed down at him tauntingly, exhaling a cloud of blueish smoke.

"Has anyone ever told you smoking rather suits you, Captain?" he said, dripping with insincerity. 

John smirked smugly. "That's cos it's a filthy habit." 

Mycroft’s thin lips quirked round the filter and he paced around the room, smoking elaborately for his prisoner’s pleasure.

"Indeed it is. What other filthy habits have you picked up in your soon-to-be short-lived spying career, hm?” he coaxed, lightly. “Stealing state secrets? Reeling in our post-room boys and pressing them into your service? Inveigling yourself into the company of my agents and corrupting them?”

"If you're going to answer your own questions, what do you need me for?" said John, with infuriating cheek.

Mycroft wheeled around. "Tell me who your contact is, if you want to see daylight again," he demanded firmly, but not angrily.

John shook his head and snorted in disdain. "You have ways of making me talk, do you?"

"Ways and means, Captain, or should I say, Agent. You can't evade me. It is just you and I. And my associate, of course. Nobody knows you're here. I can do whatever I like with you."

"You'll get nothing from me," said John, stubbornly.

The Iceman’s laugh was as cold as his name suggested. "I shall. Everyone tells me everything in the end...” He paused and his tone changed. “You're a little too…memorable to ever be a good spy, do you realise that?" he said, with disarming softness.

"Memorable how?" asked John, suspiciously.

"Too handsome. Too eye-catching by half." He stood before the bound hostage and raised his chin up with one, cold hand. John shook it off, and glared balefully.

"Flattery won't get you what you want from me, Mr Holmes," he said, eyes burning with disgust.

"Of course not. But your government is slipping. I would never employ anyone nearly half so striking. Oh, and do please call me Mycroft. Let's not be on such formal terms,” sighed the other man, heavy with irony.

John adjusted his position in the hard chair. "I'm just an ordinary bloke, Mr Holmes. People say I blend into a crowd."

"Then they are either blind, stupid, or used to mixing in very exalted company. I could pick you out of crowd in an instant, Captain Watson. For all you don't exactly stand head and shoulders above it..."

"Is that a crack about my height?!" said John, fiercely, his voice rising in pitch incredulously.

Mr Holmes looked innocent and shocked at the accusation. "Not at all."

"You won't break me with personal slights. They only make me more stubborn," said Agent Watson, truthfully.

"I meant no slight. I was praising your physical qualities. Weren't you listening?"

"I try not to listen to self-indulgent drivel."

"Who hacked the MI6 server for you?!" demanded the persistent voice of authority once more.

"I did it myself," insisted John, blandly.

"Liar. You don't possess the requisite abilities. Someone helped you. One of mine," accused the Iceman.

"Doesn't speak well of your control, does it?! Riddled with holes, your system. A child could crack it. Some spoiled little brat with too much time on his hands could easily penetrate your ring of steel," threw out the Agent, mocking and scornful, hoping the double entendre would land.

It did. The British Government went suddenly, ominously still and a little red about the cheeks. "How dare you."

But the Agent was on a roll.

"What kind of amateur operation are you running here, Holmes? A network of corruptible assets and lazy handlers; secure data that any 10 year old could burst open; toothless back office enforcers. And you at the centre, a spider caught in your own bloody web. Pathetic!"  

Mycroft placed a manicured, moisturised hand to his heart in an attitude of bitter melodrama.

"You cut me to the quick, dear boy. I'm almost hurt."

"You can't do anything to me except kill me. And if you kill me, my secrets die with me! Torture me all you want. You won't break me."

John was impressed with himself. Overacting with a raging hard-on is quite a challenge.

Holmes tutted nonchalantly. "Perhaps I will, perhaps I won't. I have no wish to cause you pain. Unless you ask me very nicely. Though I could hand you over to those who excel in it, it doesn't please me to give such distasteful orders. Besides, I am an aesthete at heart. I have no wish to mar anything so pretty, let alone destroy it."

"Pretty?!" exclaimed the Agent, as outraged as Sherlock to be labelled with this insulting epithet.

"Don't you know it? Isn't that why they gave you the job? Seduce and conquer?" said the Iceman, with a leer.

John looked away again, chin set in determination to hold out just a little longer. He could see the outline of Mycroft’s cock, heavy against his upper thigh. _So nearly there._

"Name, rank and number. I've said enough tonight."

"You've left quite a trail of broken hearts amongst my agents, Captain. Male and female, I note," said the wheedling voice, all sinuous suggestiveness and heat now.

"I'm an equal opportunities spy, me," said John, unable to resist a quip.

The Iceman raised an unamused brow.

"How drole. I quite see why they allowed you to pump them for information."

"What's your point?" John was pushing impatiently now, trying to rile his captor to action.

"My point is... I am intrigued by you, Captain. I am determined to understand the nature of your unique talents, so that I might more easily mount a counteroffensive."

"You what?"

"Just cooperate, Agent Watson. Cooperate and I'll protect you from the wrath of your paymasters. Come over to our side again. I shall make it worth your while."

"Don't believe a word of it," tutted John, scornfully.

"I can see you require a little more persuasion… You really are very attractive. No, don't turn your head. It's far too late for coyness,” crooned Mycroft, running a soft hand down John’s cheek.

"Why, Mr Holmes. Is that what you're after? Should have said. Why don't you untie me and I'll show you my special skills?” said the Agent, confident and lecherous now.

"A valiant attempt, but wit isn't chief amongst them, is it?" Mycroft shook his head as though disappointed.

"Not going to let me take me vest off? Search my pants for a concealed weapon?" mocked John, thrusting his hips almost insultingly at the well-to-do spy-catcher.

The Iceman nodded seriously. “Something like that.”

Mycroft’s eyes glinted as he reached into his inside pocket once more, and extracted a closed Stanley knife.

John’s heart beat a little faster.

“Do the honours, Lestrade,” he ordered brusquely, and Greg, whom John had almost forgotten was witnessing this little scene, sprang into action. He took the knife, pushed up the blade and walked round behind him.

“Hold still, mate,” he said, softly, and John naturally complied without a word of protest. He held his breath.

With one long rip, Greg cut the vest from his back, and then crouched at his feet and set to work on the trousers, steadily splitting each leg with the knife, with a firm, careful hand. For a few minutes, all three men barely breathed, and John’s cock, never one to obey orders, got ever stiffer as the knife made its way upwards without touching his skin once.

Greg stopped around his outer thighs, and simply ripped and tore the remains of the trousers away, leaving John naked, still tied to the chair. He safely concealed the blade and placed it upon the small table.

Agent Watson shivered at the slight temperature change, and the Iceman regarded him with hungry, reptilian eyes.

“Fetching,” he said, approvingly, still smirking unbearably. He clicked his fingers and beckoned for Greg to stand behind John once more. Thick fingers tangled in the blond man’s hair, and he was shoved unceremoniously forwards.

His eyes were forced to crotch-height, and he gazed up through his lashes to see the elder Holmes slowly take his jacket off and placed it neatly over the desk. He didn’t bother removing anything else, and simply unclipped his braces from his waistband, undid his fly and pulled his ruddy, leaking prick from his pin-stripe trousers.

John moaned low in his chest.

“Patience, Watson,” soothed the Iceman, suddenly not quite so icily. He stepped forwards, stroking himself gently. “Hold his head, Lestrade,” he snapped, and was obeyed. He leaned down to the curl of John’s ear, and said in an intense stage whisper, with perfect diction: “I’m going to fuck your mouth now. If I feel teeth, I will cut out your tongue.”

Greg and John both felt their breath catch, and a mutual thought went through their heads.

_Fuck me. When Mycie plays dark, Mycie plays dark._

As if catching their unspoken drift, Mycroft jeered and grinned at the same time, his face twisting into a conceited, contemptuous sneer. “I’m not going to spend down your throat, Agent,” he said, his voice smoky and dry. “I’m going to save it for the other end. It’s what you want, isn’t it? To be filled up and made to turn again? I always get my man, Watson. And you are no exception, you spying little whore.”

The Agent gave a groan as the hired muscle prized his jaw open - or at least, guided his all-too-willingly opened mouth towards the Iceman’s painful-looking erection.

It was shoved into his mouth and he drove himself forward, pulling Lestrade’s hand, which, of course, gave him full control. Mycroft tasted glorious on John’s willing tongue – hot and salty and fresh all at once, with an undercurrent of that woody, musky scent he wore. John laved at him, sucking at his swollen crown and opening his throat as the man pushed forwards insistently. Hard he’d wanted it, and hard he got it.

He breathed evenly through his nose and let himself relax into it when Mycroft gripped the sides of his head, and did as he had promised, fucking the Agent’s mouth - gently at first, then more roughly when he gauged his pace and tolerance. The previously cool and collected man’s hips jerked back and forth, more and more frantically, his cock rubbing the roof of John’s mouth as the rogue Agent suctioned upon it. 

Greg, still standing in support, stroked a hand through the hostage’s ashy blond hair, and loosened his grip on the Captain’s square jaw to allow his lovers to play freely.

Mycroft made not a sound, apart from harsh panting and tiny, deep grunts of satisfaction. John overcame his gag reflex to deep throat him, which generated a low, gutteral moan from the quivering body looming above. He keened in his throat, sending a surge of vibration through the Iceman’s paradoxically burning cock. Lestrade, unable to bear it any longer, finally gave up the pretence of assisting, and reached into his pants to strip and pull at his own desperately charged hard-on.

John, sensing victory, redoubled his efforts, pushing further forwards and almost overbalancing on the rickety chair. Mycroft caught him as he slipped a little, and resettled him gently, sneaking a little loving stroke to the side of his face. John smiled around the thick flesh in his mouth, and resumed trying to break apart the British Government’s most stalwart operative.

It almost worked.

"Ohh, J…," moaned the Iceman, in spite of himself. He bit his tongue at this infuriating lapse of control.

John huffed a wet laugh, and the Iceman swiftly withdrew from him, knowing he would not be able to retain the upper hand in this sorry, undone state. Why had he thought he could, again? He tucked his wet, throbbing prick back into his trousers, trying not to seem as reluctant and desperate to finish as he felt.

John chuckled, and licked his lips provocatively, swirling the elder Holmes’s pre-seminal fluid round his mouth with relish. He made burning eye contact with Greg, who stood glassy-eyed and wanking just behind the rather flustered Holmes.

"S'allright,” said the spy, cockily. “You can call me John, if you like. Your agents certainly did. 'Oh, John,' they moaned, 'ooh, Johnny, Johnnyboy, fuck me and I'll tell you anything. Make me come and I’ll betray Mycroft Holmes in a heartbeat... 'Fuck the Iceman,' they all said. _Fuck_ him."

John grinned in sheer triumph at the appalled, aghast look which crossed the face of his redoubtable, and very turned-on, nemesis.

Mycroft almost visibly pulled himself together, still panting slightly at this physical and verbal onslaught.

"Mm,” he mused, calming himself, through fast exhalations. “I really must review our training procedures.”

John laughed, genuinely. 

"I will gag you again if you don't cease this impertinent commentary," warned Mycroft, only slightly playing for time.

The lippy Agent grinned cheerfully. "Friendly persuasion won't work on me, mate."

Mycroft pounced, with the dark glint of manipulation returning to his slate-grey eyes.

"Perhaps some unfriendly persuasion, then?” he said, with a cold, sharky smile. His face fell into a mask of hard anger once more, and John titled his head, wondering at the next gambit.

“I have someone I'd like you to meet," said Mycroft, mock-pleasantly.

John frowned, and then it clicked.

Greg, glazed from handling himself to the very brink and back, obeyed the finger click and the impatient gesture from his extremely irritated boss. He walked quickly to the corner of the room, towards the large bundle of old blankets and oily rags. Quick as a flash he whipped them away, to reveal a naked Sherlock Holmes, huddled in the corner of the room; scowling and sweaty, filthy and furious, with a ball gag between his teeth, wicked-looking clamps on his nipples, and a spreader bar between his ankles.

John nearly lost his breath, and Mycroft almost crowed in glee.

Greg swiftly removed Sherlock’s gag, checking for buckle bruises. As he expected - having been the one to secure the bloody thing in the first place – he found none.

The rubber ball left Sherlock’s mouth with a wet pop, and he drooled onto himself. Greg massaged his jaw, helpfully, then remembered his place and said, “Disgusting little fucker.” He propped the lanky, hobbled man up against him, and held him in place.

Sherlock suppressed an amused snort, then exclaimed theatrically for the benefit of the whole wine cellar.

"I'm sorry, Watson, they jumped me before I could warn you!" He yelled with a desperate, passionate appeal in his voice.

John matched him, glaring fiercely at Mycroft and shouting to the rafters. "Let him go, you fiend! You bastard!"

Mycroft turned to his younger brother, arms folded, smiling like the cat who got the cream.

“He was discovered on the premises rather sooner than expected. We thought it best to subdue him, didn’t we, Lestrade? Some people cannot be too subdued, can they?” he asked, rhetorically.

Sherlock spat onto the floor in derision. Mycroft rolled his eyes and tutted insouciantly. “Such a dirty little boy.”

He sauntered back to glare down at John, noting his swollen lips and still-sticky cheeks.

“I believe you two know each other,” he said, with chilling calm, though his dilated pupils were like burning coals. “I believe you two work together. I believe…you two are going to pay for it together.”

A shudder ran through John, and, as he caught Sherlock’s eye, the filthy, furious, frantic detective, grinned a toothy grin, and winked at him with conspiratorial delight.

All very satisfactory so far, thought Mycroft Holmes to himself. But there’s always room for improvement. He strolled to the small desk, opened a drawer, and extracted a new item.

_Time to step things up._


	4. Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Iceman interrogates the rogue Agents with very unorthodox methods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're not too bored. Shaggery next chapter. This is all mostly friendly torture. But hopefully not torturous to read. x

The item was a wooden case. John had never seen it before and no idea what it contained. He was a little thrown.

Mycroft pursed his lips in concentration, and bent to retrieve something else from behind the desk. He placed a large black, blocky object on the table. A battery, with a converter, John realised.

_Oh, fuck. Well, this really is something else._

Mycroft smirked as he opened the case, and turned it towards him. It contained an item that looked not dissimilar to a dildo, except that it was plastic and had a lead connecting it at the base. In the lid of the case, set within foam, a number of phallic glass objects. Probes of some kind, with a somewhat scientific appearance, some in bizarre shapes with uses that John could barely imagine. His stomach fluttered with nerves, and anticipation.

“This is known as a Violet Wand, Captain. For electrical stimulation," explained Mycroft. "It produces a high frequency, high voltage current, and produces highly interesting sensations. These are glass electrodes. Argon-filled. They make such pretty sparks against the skin.” He made full, meaningful eye contact as he let that sink in.

John swallowed drily as he formulated an appropriate - or perhaps, rather inappropriate - response.

“How shocking,” he quipped, heavy with irony, raising a Bond-like eyebrow.

“Is there a…codeword you’d like to say to me, Agent?” prompted Mycroft, needing clarity.

John licked his lips, and shook his head with deliberation.

“No. You don’t win through threats alone, Holmes. You’ll have to work for your victory. Though I don’t imagine you’ve done a day’s work in your life, really, have you? Soft, pretty hands on you.”

“These hands?” said the Iceman, casually regarding them.

“Yeah. Don’t like getting them dirty, do you? That’s why you employ thugs like him,” taunted John, tilting his head towards a rather chuffed-looking Greg.

Mycroft nodded dangerously, and turned something over in his mind prompted by the trigger-word ‘hands’. A request that John had made via Sherlock. A thing John wanted, and which he could responsibly provide.

“These hands are capable of a great many things. Pleasant and unpleasant, as I shall demonstrate.”

Keeping eye contact with John, he placed his palm onto his cheek, with an almost imperceptible query in his eyes. John met his gaze and nodded minutely, confirming what he wanted. Then Mycroft slowly pulled his hand back by a few inches, and, with great concentration, issued a moderately hard slap to his lover’s face. Such things must be done carefully, avoiding mis-hits of ears or eyes or noses. The Iceman was nothing if not careful. John turned his head away from the hand the moment after it made contact, absorbing the blow which tingled across his cheek. He bit his lip and groaned as his cock strained helplessly. _Fuck_.

He sharply turned back to the Iceman, and spat at him in contempt, playing up hatred and outrage. The message in his eyes, however, was loud and clear. _More. Want more._

The casual violence of face-slapping was hardly second nature to Mycie, John knew. On the contrary, in real life it was abhorrent to all of them. But a little bit of it on rare occasions turned John on like hell in a play scene or during rough sex. He found it added spice and gave him some kind of bestial thrill he couldn't quite explain. His lovers did not need him to justify his desires, and were considerate enough to give him something which did nothing for themselves. Well, apart from Sherlock, who liked receiving it, but could never dole it out.

Mycroft replaced his hand on the same cheek, rubbing at it lightly, then brought it back further than before, and slapped John with a tad more force, with accuracy and deliberation, like a man lazily swatting a tennis ball.

John leaned into the slap a little more this time, allowing it to feel harder. It still was not quite enough. One more, Mycroft judged. One careful proper one ought to do it for Johnny.

He held John’s chin in his hand and played his part to perfection.

“Do please beg me to stop any time you like, Agent.”

“Fuck off!” said John, forcefully.

Mycroft let a miniscule, genuine smile show before snapping back into hard, cold villainy.

He raised his hand back further still, judging the distance to be about right and lining up the flattest part of his hand with the softest part of John’s cheek. He nodded briefly in warning, let go of John’s chin, and brought it across his face in a glancing but extremely controlled blow, snapping his wrist back this time instead of following it through. The slap echoed in the dank cellar, and John closed his eyes and let out a little “ah!” as the shock of it registered.

 _Perfect._  

“Pathetic,” he said, smirking at Mycroft with gratitude in his eyes. “You won’t crack me. Not with your pretty hands or your silly toys.”

Mycroft merely waved a hand in dismissal. _That's our John._

“As you wish. I will demonstrate the capabilities of my silly toy, as you so sneeringly call it, on your little colleague here later. You will discover its charms, I’m sure. And then we shall see whether you still feel like being stubborn, or whether you will see sense and give in to me.”

John’s eyes were drawn back to the sinister electrical device, and he tried to steady his breathing and remind himself that this really was not the underground lair of an evil torturer. And that Sherlock had nagged and nagged to be allowed to play with electrical sex aids. Mycroft had evidently agreed – only after a period of thorough research, John was certain.

Greg was a little unsure of this kind of play, and, although John was pretty curious, it had never been that high up on the list of things for the four of them to do together. He suspected there had been a few Holmesian test-runs behind closed doors. God knows there were enough naughty little devices spread across their various living quarters to keep them all coming until Doomsday. Now seemed as good a time as any for something different, he supposed.

Mycroft seemed to be examining every thought and feeling that crossed John’s face, reading apprehension, determination, uncertainty, excitement, and, above all, desire. He nodded to himself and came to a decision.

“But first, I think some traditional torture.”

Mycroft smiled smugly, and searched his trouser pocket. He pulled something out. “Ah, yes, how forgetful of me. These are for you.”

Nipple clamps, attached together by a chain.

John exhaled slowly and squared his jaw in fortitude. He was all for a bit of tit twisting, but the clamps bloody hurt.

Mycroft floated over to him, and stroked each of John’s sandy little nipples into peaks, leaning in close and nuzzling in to his face. John shivered and Mycroft quickly attached each vicious clip to each perky bud. John winced and bounced his legs up and down on the balls of his feet as he was bitten upon by cruel metal teeth.

Mycroft waited for him to settle down, regarding him with hawk-like scrutiny. John knew what he was going to do before he did it. He reached out an elegant hand and tugged hard on the chain that fell across his victim’s muscular chest. John let out a short, shocked exclamation as sharp pain raced through his nipples, across his torso and seemed to exit via the top of his head.

“Good,” said the Iceman, simply, and did it again. John gasped and curled his toes, struggling in his bonds as he tried to get a handle on the intense, shivery sensation that travelled through his body. His cock started to fill out as soon as the adrenaline hit his bloodstream, and he moaned as pain translated into illicit pleasure.

Mycroft smiled knowingly at John as he took up the Stanley knife again, and made short work of the ropes binding his wrists to the chair.

“On your feet.”

John didn’t know whether to be relieved, or extremely edgy about what was in store for him.

He stood shakily and rubbed at his wrists for effect. Mycroft, observed him unfeelingly.  

“Bring that little saboteur here, Lestrade,” he said, in an almost bored tone without even looking at the other men.

Sherlock scowled as he was half-dragged, half-carried by Greg to face John, his achingly hard cock bobbing against gravity. John watched, fascinated, as a line of viscous fluid descended from his lover's slit and dripped onto the floor. It seemed to mirror the beads of sweat running down his own chest.

The Iceman went back to the desk drawer and produced a leather riding crop. Sherlock’s riding crop, as a matter of fact, which Mycroft himself had purchased.

He brandished it with a flourish, pointing at his little brother with it.

"This impertinent creature, lately in my pay, saw fit to turn tail. It seems only fitting that that particular part of his anatomy bears the consequences of crossing me. I intend to make him suffer for it. In more ways than one. And you, as it happens, Captain.”

“Resist, John,” said Sherlock, manfully, like a hero in one of the war films which he’d watched for research. “You can take a beating as well as I.”

 “Ah, brother mine. You may find you don’t like it quite as much as you profess to,” said the Iceman, tauntingly, wagging the crop at him condescendingly. His face snapped into sudden seriousness.

“Bend and hold that bar between your feet. If you let go, it doesn’t end. It goes on and on, until you learn self-control. Or tell me your secrets.”

Sherlock sneered in his brother’s face. “I’ll tell you nothing and neither will Watson. My brother only resorts to brute force and cheap jibes because he’s not a skilled enough negotiator, John. It’s a sure sign that he’s lost the plot. It’s very sad,” he said, oozing disdain.

The Iceman was unfazed and shook his head theatrically. “Tut, tut. So disappointing to be betrayed by one’s own flesh and blood. Bend,” he commanded, stone cold.

Sherlock snarled as Greg helped him bend over - his legs locked into place by the restricting spreader bar. Greg held his hips until he found his balance, testing the right place for his hands along the metal pole. Years of yoga practice and kinky sex had conditioned his lithe body to hold harder positions than this.

His arse was fully opened to Lestrade’s ravenous gaze, while his brother stood parallel, taking in the scene he was so expertly manipulating.

“I said you would be dealt with together, did I not?” said Mycroft for John’s benefit, with deceptive reasonableness. “Whatever he takes, you take. My rebellious baby brother is stubborn. But perhaps he will give in a little easier if he knows your hide depends upon it, as he seems to think so very highly of it. Oh, I know the pair of you are _fucking_ , Captain. Frankly, I cannot wait to see what all the fuss is about.”

John shuddered deliciously at the expletive - pronounced so very properly in the Iceman’s refined cut-glass accent - as well as at the erotic promise within it.

Mycroft smirked in self-satisfaction. “Let us proceed. He will be flogged and you will match him, stroke for stroke. Do I make myself clear?”

Fiendish, indeed. John couldn’t help but admire the ingenuity of his most cunning lover. Left to a solo ordeal, Sherlock would take anything dished out for pride’s sake – as would he. But making the stoic detective responsible for John’s pain ensured full control, and also gave the appearance of sadism if not the actual practice. Well, not mindless sadism, anyhow. Sherlock had no qualms about challenging himself to take harder punishment – but he would rather be actually captured by a hostile power than force John to take more than he deemed acceptable.

John barked a small laugh in Mycroft’s smug face. “Then he can just say stop now, can’t he, and you’ll have to let me go,” he said, eager to test the Iceman’s patience.

Mycroft smiled unpleasantly. “Come, come, Agent Watson. You know better than that. You are playing a rigged game. I merely offer small opportunities for mercy within it. As one gentleman to another. Though this one here…” - he smacked his hand down upon his brother’s taut backside, causing a yip of displeasure – “is no gentleman, and will receive none.”

Sherlock flinched as he felt his brother’s cool hand on his lower back. Mycroft sighed as he ran his finger down the crack of Sherlock’s arse, and circled his delightfully exposed hole.

“Dear, dear Sherlock,” he said, affectionately, inserting the very tip of his finger. Sherlock gritted his teeth against the mortifying meowing noise that threatened to break free. “Always did want to play with the big boys, didn’t you? Anything to say before your resolve is severely tested?”

Sherlock looked up and round at his brother, with a heated glare, his damp curls falling into his eyes.

“Nice waistcoat, brother,” he said, sarcastically. And somewhat incongruously.

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and he seemed to file the comment away for later.

He compressed his lips, swished the crop through the air so it whistled and made both captive spies jump. Chuckling softly, he handed it over to Greg. John smiled inwardly. For a second, he had wondered… But no. Mycroft did not use implements on Sherlock - aside from a bedroom slipper when it was warranted, and only when he really begged for it.

It was a general rule of theirs for practical reasons. Sherlock tried to impress his older brother by testing his pain threshold. This was singularly unhelpful to Mycroft, who feared properly hurting baby brother, and felt guilty for unintentionally going over his limit. Greg had banned them from using implements in playtime without supervision, and outright in discipline scenarios. It was just emotionally and psychologically cleaner to leave true punishment or heavier play to him.

This arrangement worked for them all. It gave Greg his much-needed role at the top of the tree, and allowed the Holmes brothers to play on an equal footing and unite against him, which he found oddly endearing. It didn’t hurt for both of them to dread Gregory when he wielded some wicked piece of disciplinary equipment. The only thing worse, by mutual agreement, was Watson when he meant business. Though that dynamic had flipped tonight…

John’s internal reflections were broken by a sinuous voice in his ear.

“I see the thought of your little partner in crime being thrashed excites you,” crooned the Iceman. He reached round to grasp John’s hot and straining prick, and with the other, yanked his head back by the hair. John groaned as he was caressed and squeezed with a cool, dexterous hand, even as he put up a minor struggle.

“I think you mistake my reactions for yours, Holmes,” he said, through clenched teeth.

“Perhaps both statements are true. You’re quite wet with it, aren’t you? Almost as hard and wet as I am,” Mycroft continued, in a loaded, sensual whisper. “I don’t blame you. He’ll make such pretty noises. Do you think Lestrade can make him cry? Or you? Will it make you spend when he begs for it to stop? Or will you wait until I turn the electrodes on – when he’s _screaming_.”

“N-no,” John said, in as steady a voice as he could manage under the combined assault of verbal provocation, sore nipples and a hard-on. “It’ll take more than that,” he said, hoping that he wouldn’t just come on the spot.

“Proceed, Lestrade,” ordered the Iceman, with brisk efficiency.

John saw a very focused-looking Greg line up his aim, and let fly a firm blow of the thin, wicked crop across Sherlock’s formerly unblemished buttocks. They seemed to have agreed no warm-up strokes.

The first loud crack ricocheted off the stone walls and made them all flinch. Most particularly Sherlock, who squeaked a little in his throat. John saw his knuckles whiten on the spreader bar. He panted in time with his younger lover as Greg brought the whip down again and again. Seeing Sherlock taking it hard was dizzying stuff. He heard Mycroft purring behind him, and he thrust his hips a little to gain more friction from the palm that moments ago had been slapping his face.

Sherlock hissed and writhed as the blows rained down upon his smarting flesh.

“Oww!” he squealed, in spite of his resolve to be a big, tough undercover agent.

His legs twitched, instinctively trying to move away, but he was helplessly restricted by the metal bar between his feet. He breathed through the burn until he couldn’t keep sound at bay any longer.

“Ow, shit!” he moaned, between clenched teeth.

“Say the word and it stops,” said Lestrade, firmly.

“Stop, stop, stop!” he yelled, sounding more Lock-like than spy-ish now.

It continued.

“Ow, shit, Aston Martin!” shouted Sherlock, sounding annoyed.

Greg stopped immediately and assessed the red lines he had seared into his lover’s arse. Sherlock had tapped out a little earlier than usual, deeming this to be about the right level for John.

“Stay down,” growled Greg, as Sherlock attempted to rise.

“My turn,” purred Mycroft in John's ear.

John gulped and a shiver ran down his spine, into his cock. ‘M’ evidently had no qualms about doling out a thrashing to him. Especially one he’d basically asked for.

“I do hope you were counting, Captain?” wheedled his adversary, already knowing the answer.

John cursed under his breath. His brain had left the building as soon as Sherlock had started whimpering.

“No, I see you were far too excited,” chuckled the Iceman. “I made it… Oh, let’s say an even twenty. You’ll just have to trust that I’m correct.”

He flicked his eyes to Greg, who moved round to grip John’s neck and push him down until he too was bent at the waist.

“Hold your ankles,” said Greg, gruffly, kicking his legs wider. John complied, taking the strain in his legs. He sensed Greg moving back to Sherlock and heard his trouser zip go.

“Thank me for your punishment. Suck that,” said the brute, Lestrade. John heard a breathy little “thank you, sir,” and then a series of wet whines and groans as Sherlock put his mouth to better use.

John's tormented cock thickened even more at the filthy sound and the fact of his own exposed position, bent over awaiting harder chastisement than he was used to. It was always a squirmy sensation, in addition to being naked with a fully clothed partner. And the unfamiliarity of being quite so submissive to Mycroft, of all people, was enough to make his stomach clench and his toes curl. Sweet, placid Mycie, sweet no more – hidden behind a frosty wall, showing off his core of steel, and treating him like some naughty nuisance rather than a sexy spy. It was profoundly irritating as well as profoundly erotic.

Mycroft tapped lightly at John’s tight, pale buttocks with the leather flap at the end of the crop.

“Let’s see if he’s as brave as he thinks he is,” he said to the room at large.

John clenched his jaw and glared daggers through his legs, upside down. He almost chuckled at the sight of Mycroft’s tented trousers, but the feeling of brief superiority was instantly diminished when Mycroft brought the crop whistling down upon his flesh, laying a burning stripe across both his arsecheeks. He closed his eyes against the fierce sting.

John gasped as the lashes raised welts upon his backside and sent shudders of hot sensation through his entire body that made his pulse race and sent endorphins rushing through his brain. His cock wilted as he eased into the pain, trying not to tense and clench, which he knew from bitter experience only made it worse. He could not quite process it into pleasure yet. He grunted under the relentless arm, until he finally let go of his resolve to be silent, and started exclaiming out loud with every stroke. Just when he was on the verge of yelling the place down, it stopped, and he heard nothing but the panting of his own breath and his heart pounding in his ears. His arse throbbed like hell.

_Damn the Iceman and his devilish skills._

Mycroft let him stay there for a few seconds, then gently eased him to his feet. John found he wasn’t quite able to meet his eye, and found his chin being raised to Mycroft’s face again. This time he didn’t shake the hand off or turn away. He challenged himself to maintain eye contact and caught the little smirk of acknowledgement. 

“That was well taken, Captain,” said the Iceman, solicitously. “Let’s see what else you can take. Lestrade. Bring the other one over.”

So saying, he took hold of the chain that connected John’s nipples and led him, wincing and gasping, over to the mattress at the other end of the room.

Behind them, John heard a telltale groan of reluctance from the hired ruffian and a wet slurp as his fellow captive pulled his mouth from the man’s cock.

Greg tucked himself away and lifted Sherlock over his shoulder, carrying him and dropping him down onto on the mattress with a small ‘oof!’ He pushed him onto his front with his foot, and Mycroft shoved John roughly down next to him. John rolled onto his front to spare his sizzling arse more contact, but grimaced at the pull and drag on his poor, over-sensitised nipples.

Sherlock turned his head sidelong at him and licked his lips. His silvery irises sparkled with mischief and expectation, and John quickly leaned in and kissed his younger lover’s shapely mouth, unable to resist. He inhaled deeply, savouring the lovely masculine smell of fresh sweat, and precome, and pheromones.

“How sweet,” said Mycroft, sourly. “Unauthorised touch will be met with harsher punishment.” He smacked both their sore arses simultaneously, and they squeaked, looking into each other’s eyes with mute empathy.

John sensed Mycroft crouching beside him, and he heard the clank of the metal bucket near his head. Then he was rolled onto his back – his hiss of discomfort summarily disregarded.

John’s eyes blew wide open at the sight before him.

The Iceman was kneeling on the mattress between his spread legs, holding up a rubber enema bulb filled with water, with a four inch nozzle at one end, which he had apparently retrieved from the bucket. John’s heart beat faster and he almost cringed in dread.

“You’re not clean, are you, Agent?” said the Iceman, dead-eyed and unreadable.

John bit his lip and shook his head, slowly. _Had to ask for a bloody challenge, didn’t you?_

He knew Mycie had a bit of a _thing_ for this. As did Sherlock, though he’d claim otherwise. John and Greg put it down to general poshboy preoccupation with humiliation and bums. They privately shared a belief that both Holmes boys had had it done to them in the nursery or by some handsome village doctor visiting the Manor, and so had developed a kink for it young. 

John felt extremely sheepish under the elder Holmes’s rapier-sharp glare, and from Greg and Sherlock’s curious, investigatory glances from above and beside him.

“I want you clean so I can use you as hard as I intend to,” husked the Iceman, intently. John felt rather hypnotised by the compelling grey stare and lowering brows. “I want you to take this for me, do you understand? So I am going to do it to you. Very carefully, very thoroughly. If you behave and take it calmly, I will let Lestrade escort you to the bathroom upstairs. Provided you give your parole not to attempt an escape, of course. Or you can fight me and release it all here. It’s not a problem for me.”

Mycroft barely blinked. A challenge indeed.

John wondered what would happen if he refused. They’d move on to something else, he supposed. And he wouldn’t get fucked now, he’d get fucked later. But that did seem like a waste of a very well-set-up scene. Plus…the novelty factor. The nerve factor. The excitement factor.

Wondering what the hell he was doing, he caved in. "I'll cooperate. I give my parole,” he said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt.

The Iceman grew a degree or two warmer. "Good. You see? I’m not a savage, Agent. I want you humbled, not humiliated. I’d hate for you to be genuinely _embarrassed_. Unlike some, I am able to tell the difference between the real thing, and the performance of it for ulterior motives…”

_Rumbled. That sense of smugness didn’t last long. You should know better than to try and play a Holmes at the manipulation game, Watson._

John had a good grace to look guilty. “Ah. Yeah. Well.”

Mycroft smiled magnanimously.

“Fear not, Agent. My wrath is so easily appeased. Just need to hear you give up and say I win. Nice and loud now...,” he taunted, holding his hand up to his ear.

“I think not,” said the obstinate Agent.

Mycroft shrugged nonchalantly. “Ah. Perhaps later, then. Pull your legs up and turn onto your side.”

John complied, blushing red and turning away from the avid gaze beside him. Sherlock hummed supportively; rapt in the rare sight of his big brother dominating his hardy companion. Greg had brought himself round to face John, checking him over. He gave him a cheeky wink, and John resisted the urge to close his eyes.

_Bloody Lestrade. If he says anything about this later…_

But the thought went unfinished as the first inch of the lubed nozzle was inserted carefully but quickly into his arse and up into his rectum. He breathed and bore down against it, making the rest of the tube easier to slide in. As a doctor he knew this procedure all too well, but being on the receiving end of it was usually something he kept behind his own bathroom door. Mycroft pressed the rubber bulb and warmish water flooded up inside him, not unpleasantly. He juddered slightly, counting in his head, trying to estimate the amount of water. About 150ml, he bet himself.

Above him, Mycroft was intently gauging his lover’s reactions and finding them acceptable. Inwardly, he could not deny how touched he was that John had granted him this intimate trust. In or out of play, he always found the man’s abilities extraordinary.

When the full amount of water had been gently squeezed into him, John breathed in measured, even breaths, clenching his jaw and his internal muscles at the same time.

Mycroft gave him a few seconds before patting his leg.

“Lestrade is going to help you up, and you can go upstairs. Slowly, I expect. You can hold it, can’t you?” he coaxed, encouragingly.

“Mm-hm,” grunted John, coming up on his elbow carefully. He rolled slowly onto all fours and, using Greg for support, got gingerly to his feet. The dragging feeling in his colon was insistent but not urgent as yet. He clenched himself with all his concentration and pelvic floor control, determined not to leak any water whatsoever. He tried not to look at Greg, for fear he’d giggle and then it really would be game over.

Both Holmes brothers watched him go, with heated, fascinated stares. Neither of them found it anything other than deeply horny.

Shaking his head at how ridiculous he must appear, not least to himself, John wiggle-walked across to the door. He leaned on Greg, who helped him very awkwardly up the stairs - pausing strategically when it got potentially dangerous - and out to the bathroom. Greg waited for him in the corridor, shaking his head at the ridiculous situations he often found himself in these days.

When John exited the bathroom, relieved and immaculately clean, having taken the chance to scrub his body down too, he held up a warning finger at his nearly-laughing escort.

“Don’t!”

“Close run thing, was it, mate?” said Greg, trying to control his mouth, which threatened to break into a huge grin.

“Fuck off!” said John, snorting a laugh, and putting his hand over his eyes in self-deprecating mirth, as he saw himself objectively. He was naked, he was wearing nipple clamps, he had a sore, striped backside, and he’d been forced to walk with an arseful of water up a flight of stairs, in the middle of a secret agent roleplay that seemed about to escalate into hitherto untrodden territory.

“They’re a couple of perverts, those two,” chuckled Greg, delightedly. “You asked for this, you daft bastard!”

John shook his head, wretchedly. “I know, and if you mention it even once after tonight, you are on a total bonk ban. Seriously, mate, you won’t get near my arse for weeks. Sloshing with water or otherwise.”

“Come on, you. Back to the Iceman. You know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. And he has plans for that sparkling little arse of yours.”

Greg took him by the shoulders, and pushed him back towards the cellar steps.

When they re-entered the room, they were met with an eerie buzzing sound. The electricity had been turned on. John felt like he’d entered a science fiction film.

The sinister battery, a thick cable, and the Violet Wand case lay on the floor, where the Iceman knelt, examining and connecting up his dastardly equipment. He shut off the power as Lestrade pushed John over to the mattress and shoved him down on his back.

Sherlock lay face-up with his arms stretched above his head. The spreader bar had gone, but the clamps remained. Unnervingly, he did not look at John, seemingly focused only on his brother as he held aloft the electrical Wand, now with an electrode attached to it – a long, thin piece of glass with a small spherical bulb at the top. Mycroft regarded it with narrowed eyes, checking the connection.

Maintaining penetrating eye contact with John, the Iceman stood, and with deliberate slowness removed all his metal accessories - cufflinks, watch chain, tie pin and collar studs. He removed his waistcoat, tie, braces and arm garters, until he stood in only his shirt and trousers. Even in this more casual state, Mycroft Holmes oozed self-assurance and control. John wondered how anyone could ever refuse him anything, personally or professionally.

He rolled his sleeves and knelt to his implements once more. He turned a dial on the Wand, and it made a fizzing, buzzing noise, which sounded frankly dangerous. The glass electrode glowed purple, which made it seem all the more alien. Smiling darkly, Mycroft touched his own hand to the very end of the glass probe. It sparked purple too, much to John’s surprise. Mycroft barely flinched, as he tested out, and also cleverly demonstrated, the lowest shock capacity of the device. John, more fascinated than fearful now, settled himself back and awaited the next phase of the game.

“It goes a lot higher than that, of course,” said the deceptively soothing baritone. “You will watch, and I will explain. But first, Lestrade is going to prepare you both.”

Greg knelt before Sherlock with a grim expression. He produced a tube from his pocket, and lifted the man’s lanky legs up, slicking up a finger and inserting it into his puckered opening. Sherlock moaned blissfully, then remembered he wasn’t really supposed to be blissful and tried to change it to a convincing pained sound. No-one was fooled.

The Iceman hummed appreciatively as Greg wiggled his finger in his brother’s tight, smooth passage.

“This isn’t ordinary lubricant, by the way, Captain Watson,” he said, casually.

John tilted his head, enquiringly, trying not to seem too interested.

“No,” continued Mycroft, with a malevolent grin. “It’s conductive gel. To allow the electricity to pass more easily through him. And you.”

John swallowed thickly as Lestrade manhandled his legs up and apart, and began anointing his hole with the cold, slippery gel, rubbing at his perineum and balls as he did so, stimulating his cock back to stiffness. He panted at the tension in the room, buzzing almost as loudly in his ears as the electrical charge from the Violet Wand.

Mycroft cleared his throat and brandished the device. He turned it on, and it crackled to life once again.

“Now, my little spies. We shall see if this loosens your tongues.”

He very slowly brought the glowing purple tip of the Wand to Sherlock’s upper thigh, holding it mere millimetres away. It instantly made a sharp zapping sound as the electricity jumped the tiny gap from the device to the flesh. Sherlock jolted a little, and made a tiny ‘uunf!’ sound, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a giggle.

Mycroft did it again to the other thigh, producing the same reaction. Then he moved across to John, to do the exact same thing. The shock was mild. A little like an accidental shock one might get from a plug socket. Sharp but brief. Mycroft saw John’s mental process as he contemplated it.

“The electricity jumps, you see. So I don’t have to touch you and dirty my pretty hands, as you so rightly observed. Let’s see what happens when I turn this dial up a notch.”

He did so, and the sound increased. Sherlock looked up eagerly, as Mycroft brought the Wand to his thigh again, zapping him four times in quick succession, then lower down his legs. He cried out a little at each shock, and his legs jolted almost violently. Then, smirking cruelly, Mycroft brought the Wand higher, up to Sherlock’s vulnerable, still-clamped nipples.

Mycroft placed his free hand on his brother’s stomach, to warn him when it was coming, then moved the tip of the electrode just above one clamp. It sparked rather spectacularly, a little flash of purple, and made a loud snapping noise. But Sherlock made the most noise of all, yelling as his nipple was sharply stung. The sensation went ripping through his body, unpleasant for mere seconds, leaving behind a tingly, warm sensation and goose bumps that did not go down. He nodded, and Mycroft zapped the other nipple, causing the same chain reactions, but a far louder cry the second time. Then it happened again. And again. 

John was open-mouthed.

“God bless Nikola Tesla, eh, Captain?” husked the Iceman, like a mad professor, his face lit by crazy purple light, against a background of fizzing, crackling energy.

“The smaller the electrode’s surface, the harsher the shock. The glass is crystal quartz, so it won’t break. Even if I put it inside you. Isn’t that reassuring?”

_He cannot be fucking serious!_

John was sweating now, all witty quips lost to him in the mild anxiety of the moment. Mycroft held his gaze, waiting to see what he would choose to do. He chose to lie back, submissively. Trustingly.

“I am going to spare you the sparking nipple clamps, Agent. Not all Wands are safe to use above the waist, but this one is. However, I’d like to try another tack with you. Lestrade, remove our guest's jewellery.”

The order was disingenuous – everyone knew the most painful part of using nipple clamps was their removal, as the blood rushed back into the sensitive nerve endings. John winced genuinely as Greg took them off, one by one, his hands clenching and releasing in fierce resistance of the fire in his chest.

As soon as he calmed, the Wand was turned on; its electrical buzz high and intense-sounding, which added to his anticipation and primal fear.

He braced himself as Mycroft brought the tip to his sore nipples. The stronger charge thudded through him, making his limbs jump and his whole body jerk out of his control.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed, unintentionally. Mycroft checked him over conscientiously, and saw that he was fine. Just a little, well, shocked.

He repeated the action, over and over. John thought his brain might melt. His hard-on returned with a vengeance as the thrill of it pulsed through him - his nerve endings sparking and tingling and _hurting_. The sheer weirdness of it struck him as a massive turn-on, and the fact of Mycroft wielding this new toy - the Master of heady new sensations - was a central part of his pleasure.

Suddenly Greg was kneeling beside him, a reassuring presence for all he was meant to exude quiet menace. He stroked at his leg, anchoring him.

Mycroft moved back to his brother, and skittered the Wand over the apex of his groin at the same higher frequency, causing yelps and jumps. He turned him over onto this front, and Lestrade turned John. The elder Holmes took the electrode to the backs of their thighs, their arms, the base of their spines, and finally, to both of his lovers’ striped bottoms – one delectably peachy, the other taut and muscular. He focused the shocks on them for some time, and they squealed and squeaked, yipped and screeched, flipped and flopped around like fish out of water, as the power was turned gradually higher. Purple sparks ran across the skin of John’s backside, and the zapping sensation seemed to race up inside of his arse and directly through his core.  Pain - hot and jarring and temporarily deeply uncomfortable pain, it certainly was - but devilishly exciting and wicked-feeling.

So high on their own physical state were the two spies, that they almost missed the wordless communication happening above their heads. John saw from his peripheral vision that Greg had moved round to pull Sherlock’s lined, welted bottom cheeks apart, presenting a new target for the Iceman's fiendish attentions. Greg swallowed hard as the moist little hole was revealed, reminding himself that nasty henchmen didn't dribble with slack-faced lust.

“Oh, very nice,” said Mycroft, in a calm, complimentary tone, regarding the familiar sight of his brother's cute and inviting aperture. John wondered at his ability to remain composed in the face of such provocation, and knew it must be costing real effort. The elder Holmes smoothed his hand over the reddened, rounded globes, and then fully inserted his forefinger into the twitching rosette between them.

Sherlock whimpered, and John thought he caught a tiny little ‘oh’, which made his heart melt. He steeled himself to be less of a softie though, when he caught the cheeky grin being aimed at him from his fellow captive. Trouble with a capital T.

“You,” said Mycroft, in a gravelly, accusatory tone. “You, my naughty brother, have _done_ something. You will confess it to me before the night is out.”

Sherlock said nothing, just smirked and closed his eyes, awaiting whatever fate befell him. John was puzzled.

_Is something else going on here?_

Mycroft extracted his finger, wiping it off on his brother’s sore buttocks, then switched on the Wand again, turned it up a notch, and brought the electrode fizzing and hissing to kiss his brother’s pretty arsehole.

As the Iceman had promised, Sherlock screamed.

John twisted further round to see what was happening, and saw the sparks shooting from between his lover's buttocks. He caught the wild-eyed, open-mouthed rictus of pain on his face, and it gave him a start, until he saw the giveaway flush of masochistic delight upon his cheek, and the gleeful sheen in his eyes. Mycroft too caught the look and said nothing. He simply electrocuted his brother’s twitching hole a few times more, pulling from him yet more blood-curdling yowls and frantic movement of limbs. The Iceman rolled his eyes in a long-suffering sort of way.

_Overacting, brother mine. Very gratifying all the same._

When the torment ended, Sherlock's face was as red as his bottom. Greg checked his expression with concern, seeing a bit of a struggle, but also a blissful kind of satisfaction. He looked up at Mycroft, a bit worried, and received a reassuring smile.

Then it was John’s turn. He buried his head in the mattress, grimacing in anticipation, wondering if he’d have to safeword - if he could even remember what his safeword was. He felt Greg spreading his arse, and twitched expectantly. Not knowing when the pain was coming was the worst part. Just how dreadful was this going to be?

The buzz of the Wand flickered to life, and he bit down on nothing as Mycroft leaned in.

The shock, when it came, started low, and John had the sudden hilarious image of having sat on a toaster by accident. His whole body jolted helplessly up and away from the fierce sting. He shouted out into the mattress, then brought his forearm round to bite down on. The second shock was harder, thuddier, somehow, and shot like a dart from his hole right up to his gut, his solar plexus, and his brain stem. Or so it felt. His face burned with effort against the racing agony - his whole body tightened with it. His skin prickled, going hot and cold at the same time. The third shock, a little further inside him, was breathtaking; the fourth, almost overwhelming. The fifth was sharp and ghastly, and about all he could take. He screamed and bucked, shaking his head from side to side to try and rid himself of the lightning that fizzled through his arse and into his head via his spine.

“Fuck!! Fucking hell, Mycroft!” he shouted, angrily. Then breathed and calmed, as he realised everyone had gone still to let him recover. He panted manically, and felt a firm, cool hand on his lower back. It tapped him rather urgently, needing an answer.

“John?” said Greg, quietly.

He nodded and turned his head round to look at the Iceman, who, incongruously, was biting his lip and blinking curiously.

“OK. OK…I’m OK. Bloody hell, you’re _evil_ ,” he groaned, then laughed, gone into near-hysteria by the ridiculous, exhilarating high of it. He felt literally and metaphorically electrified.

Mycroft chuckled, knowing all too well how John’s system responded to extreme provocation.

"Very satisfactory, Captain," he said, with pleasure. "Challenging, but not impossible."

John took some moments to gather his wits, but next to him Sherlock was gearing up for more.

Mycroft loomed above the prone detective-spy, straddling his lanky legs. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“Are you going to break for me, Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, silkily.

“Never!” ground out the recalcitrant hero, tossing his head to the side defiantly, and thrusting his hips ever so subtly into the mattress for a bit of sneaky stimulation.

“That’s my boy.” The Iceman smacked his brother’s welted backside once more, causing an annoyed little squeal of protest, then he roughly flipped him over onto his back, and leaned in close to his haughty, sweaty face, searching for answers. “Hmm. Full of lies, your eyes. Let me see if I can get them out. Oh, do brace yourself, brother mine. This really is going to smart.”

He switched the Wand’s power back on, and John watched in mild horror as the thin, deviant little electrode was brought within striking distance of Sherlock’s erect cock. The current made the vile noise again, and John winced as Sherlock shrieked into the air and brought his hands by defensive instinct up to his groin.

“Keep his hands away, Lestrade. He is interfering and might get burned if he doesn’t cooperate.” A health and safety warning, realised John.

Greg pinned Sherlock’s hands, and Mycroft shocked his brother’s genitals – his cock, his balls, underneath to his perineum - a few more terrible times. The electricity cracked on impact. Sherlock screamed out and writhed off the mattress, his whole body seemingly wracked with agony. When the shocking stopped, Sherlock was whimpering and panting, his eyes leaking tears, but his expression suffused with a kind of ecstatic pride.

John did not know whether to be impressed or appalled. He settled on a mixture of the two, but somewhere in between, there was profound arousal, as evidenced by his own rigid cock.

“Say it,” demanded Mycroft, harshly, leaning over his brother on all fours, pressing them nose to nose, speaking practically into his mouth. 

“No!” shouted Sherlock, in a ragged, hoarse voice.

“Yes! Say it. Admit it.” The Iceman humped his clothed prick on top of his captive's bare one. 

“No!” came the determined riposte.

“No?” Mycroft moved off, as though disgusted.

The Wand was turned back on and the shocking resumed, inducing yet more high-pitched wails and heart-rending howls.

“All right! All right!” shouted Sherlock, full-voiced and desperate. He gripped his leaking cock and his hand was snatched away by Lestrade. “I’m… I'm susceptible to the Iceman!” he wailed in defeat, huffing and pouting at being made to say it.

Mycroft’s face broke into a triumphant, and, if truth be told, utterly adoring grin. He turned the electricity off and stroked at Sherlock’s cock, which rose and stiffened against his hand.

“Oh, you little darling. There we are," he soothed, gently. "Wasn’t so hard, was it? Now say I win,” he said, with a callous grin.

Sherlock snorted and shouted “Never!” at the top of his voice.

Mycroft took this in his stride.

“Now tell me what you’ve done that you think so clever, and that you think I don’t know about. There is something.”

Sherlock glared with narrowed eyes, as though his big brother were trying to ruin all his fun.

“Bugger off, Mycroft!” he yelled, and then started giggling hysterically as the secret, naughty thought ran through his mind.

John and Greg gaped at the insane pair of them. 

The Iceman turned to catch John gawping, and smiled his by-now familiar sinful, slow smile.

“Oh, Captain. I do hope you don’t feel left out. I said I would try a different tack with you, from this little pain slut here. I believe you to be more receptive to pleasure. So that is what you will receive. Of a sort. There are other ways of using the Violet Wand, to elicit very different reactions. I intend to test the hypothesis on you, while my henchman here, stretches this little beast with a simply enormous wand of his own.”


	5. Sinker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final showdown.

John could not imagine what was going to happen next, except that Sherlock was going to get his brains buggered out for Britain by a very desperate-looking Lestrade.

He watched as the horny henchman roughly manhandled the lanky detective onto all fours, whipped his trousers down and practically mounted him. Sherlock looked absolutely delighted as Greg entered him roughly, shoving his whole body back and forth as he fucked like a grunting feral beast.

Mycroft smiled lethargically, as though watching an only mildly interesting cricket match, though John could tell it was taking a toll on his well-constructed façade. Suddenly, the Iceman clicked his fingers in John’s face, demanding his full attention.

He was holding up a kind of utility belt, and John watched him clip it round his hips, and place the Wand into a holster at one side, to free up both hands. He stripped his shirt off over his head, then he took what looked like a thick electrical cable, attached it to the end of the Wand, and wrapped it securely round his bare waist, tucking it into the waistband of his trousers.

“This is a body contact cable,” he explained, for all the world like a Year 7 science teacher. “If I attach this to myself, Captain, I become the conductor. Which is apt, don’t you think, given how nicely I have conducted this entire affair?” The Iceman smiled smugly at his own wordplay.

“The electrical charge is now flowing through my body, though I feel nothing of it, except a mild hum of sorts. Until I touch you, when things do get a little more interesting. If I do this, for example…”

John flinched on instinct - and from recent experience - as Mycroft reached out and stroked his inner thigh. He felt an instantaneous mild buzz - less sharp than the direct application of the Wand had been. Not painful. Rather warm and fuzzy, like an ordinary vibrator being pressed to his skin, with an additional kick to it. Except that it came from his lover’s own hand.

Comprehension dawned. He was being electrified through Mycroft. The implications were astonishing.

John gazed up at his lover, awestruck and dumbfounded.

“Not so bad, eh?” said Mycroft, comfortingly. “This is indirect electrification, you see? Less nasty when the current flows through another body first. It does produce a little kickback on me sometimes, so I will keep the setting low. No point frying myself in pursuit of your defeat. And you are about to be defeated, I’m afraid, Captain. Though I have so loved playing you.”

The Iceman smiled like a shark, and bumped his power up just a notch.

“Now, what other persuasive sensations might I be able to pass on…?” he asked himself, rhetorically. “If I were to kiss you, for example…”

He leaned in, and John chuckled at the glorious warm buzz through his tongue as it met Mycroft’s. An electrified snog. He felt his hair stand on end and his vision blur as the soft charge heightened all his senses. The Iceman kissed him, hard then soft, with languorous licks and insistent little staticky nibbles. John’s head span.

Mycroft pulled away, and they exchanged meaningful glances.

“Mm. That was nice, wasn’t it?” he asked. John nodded sincerely.

“What else might my electrified tongue get up to?”

“Oh, that’s more fucking like it!” exclaimed John, temporarily losing his inner monologue.

All three of his lovers laughed out of character, and he snorted at himself as he blushed.

Mycroft leaned in for another mind-altering kiss, then slowly kiss-buzzed his way down John’s entire body, pausing to apologise to his poor, abused nipples, then down to his belly-button, which elicited very un-Agentlike giggles. John’s entire being thrummed with positive energy. He tingled from top to tail.

The Iceman reached his intended destination, and finally, finally opened his warmly-charged mouth, to lick a crackling, fizzing stripe up John’s quivering cock.

“OH _fuck_!” wailed the willing victim, as the same procedure was repeated over and over again.

He dropped his thighs open and Mycroft settled between them, engulfing his grateful lover's prick with his mouth to bestow John’s first ever electrified blowjob.

John’s brain shut down all other processes, and he became entirely about this.

“Yes,” he was whispering, on a loop. “Yes, yes!”

Mycroft licked further down, making his balls vibrate, which was highly odd but not unpleasant. The insistent tongue slipped lower still to tend lovingly to his perineal ridge, then down to his pulsating, slick hole. The tip of the buzzing tongue slipped in so easily, and John could almost literally see stars in the air above him as he was penetrated with electrification. Mycroft worked his way back to his cock, sucking a little harder now, and the feeling intensified tenfold.

John’s head flew back against the mattress, and he turned to see Sherlock’s luminous eyes boring into at him as Greg hammered into him from behind, both unable to disguise their fascinated arousal. John felt trapped between all three of his lovers in full command of their erotic powers, and knew he was defeated already.

When the Iceman’s long, slim finger - throbbing with electricity - finally entered him, it was absolutely game over for Agent Watson. He clutched at Mycroft’s shoulders as the warmly buzzing digit pressed his prostate and stayed put. He was dimly aware of yowling like a trapped animal as he orgasmed from somewhere deep in the pit of his gut. It lasted longer than he’d thought possible, and he wondered momentarily if this was what happened for women. Something multiple and worth the extra effort.

When he’d finished, Mycroft turned the Wand off and knelt up; his hair a static mess, his face wet and flushed, and glowing with pride. John couldn’t find words, but knew they were not required.

Mycroft leaned down to lick John’s semen from his still-contracting belly, and John ran a grateful hand through his lover's mad red hair. Next to them, Sherlock was begging, having long-since abandoned his fictional reticence.

“Please, please. Make me do it, Greg…!”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed with dark pleasure, and he quickly turned the Wand back on, then reached out and placed his hand on Greg’s lower back, holding it there in full contact. The current was now flowing though him too, in a chain, John realised. Greg jolted slightly, but carried on fucking Sherlock with strong, hard thrusts. Sherlock cried out the instant Mycroft's hand landed, transferring the charge. His lithe, muscular body jerked wildly, almost unseating his eager violator.

He hissed through his teeth and writhed on Greg’s cock as it crooked upwards to press at his most intimate nerve-endings. Pleasure-pain shot through his spine, through his tormented nipples to his prostate, sending sparks of almost-uncomfortable sensation shooting through his prick.

“Ohohoh, gonnnacomegonnacome…,” he panted, frantic with desperation.

“Don’t you dare, Sherlock Holmes,” warned Mycroft, turning off the Wand and discarding it completely as he geared up to take action.

“Can’t-help-it-Mycie!!”

“Don’t! I want it!”

Snarling greedily, and with a face like thunder, Mycroft, to Greg’s wide-eyed surprise, yanked him back and urged him away. Greg grunted and pulled out as gently as he could, then wrapped a firm hand around his youngest lover’s straining cock to prevent the onset of climax.

Sherlock moaned at the loss of him, but keened in delight as his brother quickly unleashed his long, curved cock from his trousers, and shoved it ruthlessly, in one steady thrust, into his open, twitching arsehole. As the Iceman slid home with an animalistic grunt, he removed the wicked clamps still adorning his brother's nipples - the final trigger which overloaded the system. Sherlock let out a high-pitched little scream and came in a powerful, spurting arc with just a few tiny flicks of Greg’s wrist.

The manic detective howled through his orgasm, back arching as far as it would go. He thrashed and shuddered to pieces from sternum to hips, the electrical charge having helped push him to a new, higher plane. John watched, utterly mesmerised.

Mycroft bit his lip and his face crumpled in ecstasy as he was clamped down upon by Lock’s spasming internal muscles. He was brought close to the edge, but mastered himself not to release, letting his brother finish and shiver through his aftershocks until he dropped back to the mattress, moaning in bliss. Mycroft stayed lodged within him, still fully hard, unable to help giving a few extra thrusts. Sherlock whined and gasped as more fluid was milked from him, until it became uncomfortable, verging on horrid.

“No, no, Mycie, no more!” he pleaded, and Mycroft withdrew carefully, gently petting his flank, nodding and shushing him.  

Greg soothed Sherlock’s forehead with his hand, wiping away sweat and leaked tears and dribble. Mycroft leaned in, whispered something unheard into his brother’s ear, kissed it briefly, and pulled away.

“You fucking beast, Holmes!” said Lestrade, impressed and rather shellshocked by this primal little display.

Mycroft looked momentarily unbeastlike, then remembered himself, leaned in to snog Greg’s breath away, and pushed him towards John.

“That was unchivalrous of me. Please. Take this one as compensation. I’ll have your seconds.”

Greg shook his head disbelievingly at Mycroft’s audacity, and heard a giggle from the rather hysterical John.

“Yeah, take this one, mate, he’s fucked already.”

Greg did. Keeping John on his back, he lifted his legs apart. The defeated Agent's earlier orgasm had made him loose and relaxed enough to slide in with barely any resistance. Greg groaned as John's soft heat took his girth so easily - easier than Sherlock took it. He angled his hips up so he could pound deeper as he chased his own vigourous finish. John was beyond language now and simply moaned incoherently with every firm, stretching thrust, with his eyes rolled back in his head.

Greg gasped as the evening's activities finally caught up with him – such sounds and smells and sights replaying in his head. Lock screaming so happily; John’s nervous trust as his desires were fulfilled; and the Iceman - master of dark ceremonies - victorious and resplendent, and just so fucking _cool_.

His hips locked out and he shot shuddering up inside John’s gut, saying all his lovers’ names out loud, as he was wont to do when he just couldn’t cope with how good it was.

Mycroft smiled, soft-eyed, as Gregory rolled away, breathing brokenly and huffing to himself. He cuddled in to Sherlock, and they barely retained consciousness as Mycroft braced John’s legs up on his shoulders, bent him almost double, and pushed his cock back in through the wetness Gregory had left behind.

John was slack with exertion, but not so much that he didn’t want to finish this properly. He leaned up with what little strength he had left, brought his hands around Mycroft’s neck and touched their foreheads together. Mycroft kissed him deeply as he made love to him with slow, deliberate strokes, pistoning his hips upwards to nudge repeatedly at the spongy gland inside.

“One more? One more. Can you?” he whispered, in a conspiratorial, cajoling tone.

John nodded, closed his eyes, and let himself be taken there. Sparks stronger than electricity fired his blood as his magnificent captor speared him through. His second orgasm, when it came, seemed to come from the very base of his spine, and momentarily blacked out his vision. Mycroft watched with stunned fascination as a tiny spurt of clear liquid shot from John’s now-spent cock - and that, coupled with the sudden clutch and grip of the smooth passage around his aching prick, forced him wailing into his own triumphant, brain-rattling climax.

From underneath the roaring of his own blood and the pounding of his heartbeat, the Iceman heard a refrain that was simply music to his ears.

“You win,” panted the spent Agent, holding up his hands in submission. “You win. You win. You win.”

“Oh, my love,” said Mycie, truthfully, as the Iceman's  _froideur_ fell away. “I think we all win.”

He collapsed onto the mattress, and the laughter he’d been dying to unleash since the night began echoed round the wine cellar, which until seconds ago had been his underground interrogation chamber.

The room filled with panting recovery breaths and contented, shagged-out sighs of repletion. The spying game was seemingly over. 

Until Sherlock suddenly sat up – always contrarily alert when the others began to droop. He was laughing too, but the sound was rather more self-satisfied than generous.

“You don’t win, _frater meus_. John! John, he doesn’t win,” he said in a nagging tone, shaking John’s arm to make sure he was paying attention for this next bit.

“Eh? Oh, God, what? Why not?” groaned John, with his arm over his face. Greg was rummaging with a box of tissues, mopping up what mess he could from Sherlock while he wiggled and squirmed. He wiped himself down and chucked the tissues to John, who did his best to clean up most of the evidence of Agent Watson’s utter capitulation.

“He doesn’t win, John, because I got what I wanted without confessing my private little side caper. You let me come without extracting the truth, Mycie! So I win,” he stated, certain that his point was obvious.

Greg looked up at the increasingly smug younger Holmes. He cringed a little as he saw what was coming.

Mycroft stopped laughing, and his face fell rather comically.

“Ah,” he said, jaw clenched with annoyance. “Damn.” He supposed he had gotten rather carried away.

“Can I ask a question?” enquired John, politely. “What the fuck are you banging on about?”

“Good question, Watson,” said Sherlock, with professional detachment. “But not the right question. Nor the right person to ask. The right question is this: how many waistcoats do you have in your wardrobe, _Iceman_?”

John looked up, baffled. Then he recalled Sherlock saying something taunting about Myc’s waistcoat earlier in the game. But why was Greg ducking his head so guiltily? And why had Mycroft’s face transformed into a mask of cold horror?

“No. No, Lock, you can’t have…,” Mycroft stuttered, pointing a finger of warning at his gleeful brother.

“Answer. How many?” Sherlock demanded. His lightning-blue eyes were dancing with secretive pleasure.

Mycroft sighed heavily.

“At the last inventory, 52. One for each week of the year, as it happens.”

“Sure about that, are you?” teased the younger Holmes, with some deeper meaning John couldn’t discern.

“Not anymore, no!” snapped the elder, petulantly.

“Clever of you not to be. For they are gone, brother mine. All gone!”

“What’s this?” asked John, at the same time as Greg groaned, “Oh, Lock, you didn’t?!”

“Didn’t…?” enquired Sherlock, disingenuously. “Didn’t sneak in here under the Iceman’s very nose, liberate his waistcoat collection and burn them all in a bin on the Heath? Yes. Did. Ha!”

A gloating Lock was a very unedifying, though infuriatingly adorable, sight indeed.

“Sherlock Holmes!” exclaimed all three of his long-suffering partners at once.

“Very unsporting, Lock!” said Mycroft, slapping his hand onto the mattress in fury.

“I was being a spy, it was my job to discover and steal state secrets!”

“The number of waistcoats I own is NOT a state secret - how many more times must we go through this?! What sort of spy steals items of an operative’s clothing anyway? It makes no sense!” thundered Mycroft, gesturing despairingly with his hands.

Sherlock grinned his Cheshire Cat grin.

“You’re just bitter because I have triumphed, and you, Mycroft S. Holmes, have _failed_ to catch me. Thus I win the whole bloody game!”

“Why would you do that, mate?!” exclaimed John, sitting up to confront him, wondering how they’d gone so rapidly from afterglow to potential massive row. Mycie’s waistcoats – that was a low blow.

“Because, John,” said Mycroft, in a flinty voice, “he has been after my waistcoats for years. He takes rather against them, for some reason. Has done ever since he was a child. Every five years or so he makes a burglarious attempt upon them, and this is exactly the kind of opportunity he looks for. It is a sort of hobby for him. I have lost count of the number of garments I’ve had cremated over the decades. I thought perhaps we were over that little spate of sartorial destruction, baby brother.”

He glared sternly to no avail. The serious eyebrows never worked. It was really too aggravating.

“Nope, not over it,” said Sherlock in a jolly tone. “And you can’t be angry only with me, because Greg helped, so there!”

“Gregory, you double-crossed me?!” exclaimed Mycroft, looking with shocked betrayal at his shamefaced lover.

Greg held out his hands defensively. “I didn’t know it would be for this, doll. He convinced me to rig your cameras. For a harmless prank, I thought. You bloody promised it would be nothing destructive or awful, Lock!” he finished, angrily. 

“I said it was nothing of any consequence, Lestrade. Which waistcoats definitely aren’t. They’re silly and out of date,” corrected Sherlock, with great certainty. “And it was fun,” he added, for good measure.

John slapped his hand to his forehead, waiting for the inevitable eruption of recrimination.

“And yet…,” murmured Mycroft, almost to himself, stroking his chin reflectively.

Greg suddenly seemed to remember something important.

“Oh, yeah… Hang on…”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and flickered from one man to the next.

“What?”

“Yeah,” said Greg, matter-of-factly, “You see, the trouble with double-crossers, is that they will double-cross…”

Sherlock’s face twisted into disbelieving outrage.

“You what?!”

Greg grinned with cheeky self-confidence. He held his hands up and shrugged.

“Sorry, love. I knew you were up to something a bit naughtier than usual, so I turned myself in to the Iceman and, er, well, you did burn a set of waistcoats. A second, decoy set we had his tailor knock up. Exactly the same. The originals are still hanging in the wardrobe, last we checked.”

Sherlock looked like he might burst into tears. Mycroft held out a hand and stroked his brother's arm comfortingly.

“Oh, darling, don’t look so upset. You will persist in underestimating me. I guard my garments jealously against your advances, but it always pays to have back-up. Bait and switch, dear. Classic bait and switch.”

“So you have’t lost anything, Myc?” asked John, trying to keep up through his post-sex haze.

Sherlock seemed to consider this.

“No, I suppose not. But… It’s funny, actually… I do remember asking myself whether Lestrade might not be quite trustworthy as a double agent. And, now I come to think of it, I seem to recall there were more than 52 items in my waistcoat funeral pyre. Exactly double that number, in fact.”

The smirk was back, as Sherlock Holmes saw himself racing across the finish line to vast applause.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…,” muttered Greg, shaking his head, aghast.

“No! I don’t believe you!” cried Mycroft, as the blood drained from his cheeks.

“Yes! I knew you must have two sets. You've made the mistake of wearing some from the second set, perhaps when the first has been in the laundry. You've tried to pass two seemingly identical items off as one. But any intelligent observer - i.e., me - would notice that one was older and more worn than the other. Telltale threads and thinning of material. Blindingly obvious. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, brother! A quick call to your tailor was all it took to discover the truth of your recent order, _et voila_! I was able to sneak back in, and nab the lot. Not as clever as you think you are, Iceman,” crowed Sherlock, with a very undignified poked-out tongue.

“NO! You’re bluffing!”

Mycroft struggled to his feet and bounded nakedly from the room. Sherlock eagerly followed, pulling John up to make sure he didn’t miss the big reveal. Greg groaned as he sloped after them, rubbing his head at an oncoming migraine.

They reunited in the large master bedroom. Mycroft donned his robe, feeling a bit self-consciously nude. He frowned with deep concern, and opened the large walk-in closet at one end of the room, cringing as though a tiger might leap out at him. They collectively stared at the contents.

There on the rack were a large run of coat-hangers, with a multitude of waistcoats hanging from them.

Sherlock’s eyes almost popped out of his head, and his mouth dropped open. Mycroft stood smirking with his hands on his hips.

Greg chuckled, and John snorted behind him.

“No!” howled Sherlock, sinking to his knees and battering the carpet with his fists in rage. “I burnt them ALL!”

“A third set, Myc?!” asked John, choking down his laughter as he sat, wincing, on the bed.

It was the Iceman’s turn to gloat now. But when wasn’t it?

“In fact, it’s the original set, dear. For sentimental reasons, I like to keep them close. I knew there’d be something of this nature sooner or later. I am prepared for just this entirely expected eventuality. Though I am grateful to Gregory for tipping me off well in advance. Who knows how many more multiple sets I may have, baby brother, or where they might be stashed?”

“But… doesn’t it cost you a fortune?” laughed John, as Sherlock fell onto his face and began kicking his legs up and down against the floor, in full tantrum mode now.

“Well, yes. But Salvatore is such a good tailor, and it keeps a roof over his head,” said Mycroft, indulgently. “I must have my waistcoats, and Lockie must have his fun. It’s a harmless enough little preoccupation for him. Keeps him out of worse mischief.”

Sherlock looked up, red in the face, utterly livid at being bested, and quietly impressed by the long-long games his big brother played.

“I’ll find them all, one day, Mycie,” he swore, vehemently. “You can’t keep at it indefinitely. Salvatore won't live forever, and I never give up!”

“Of course not, darling. Do please carry on as usual, your tenacity is admirable,” said Mycroft, magnanimously, patting his brother’s curly head with irritating condescension.

Greg flopped onto the bed, and was immediately pounced upon by a furious Lock.

“You triple-crossed me, Lestrade!”

He pummelled at his lover’s chest with his fists. Greg captured them in his hands and locked his wriggling lover's arms to his sides, grinning broadly.

"Of course I did, daft lad! I like my Mycie's waistcoats. He'd look all wrong without them. I’ve known about the replica versions for ages, though not about the third set, admittedly. Sorry, baby. Couldn’t let you do it."

"Thank you, darling man,” said Mycroft, heart-warmed to be so defended. He turned stern eyes upon his pouting brother. “Sherlock, you have narrowly avoided the absolute hiding to end all hidings, you know. If you had succeeded in destroying _all_ my lovely waistcoats, I would not have been responsible for my actions. I'd be thanking Gregory if I were you, not sulking at him."

"Traitor!" declared Sherlock, looking mutinously down at Greg.

"Arse-saver, actually,” corrected the traitor in question.

Sherlock snorted. "I can handle a little..."

"Spanking? Reckon?"

Sherlock cringed.

"Mm. Doesn't bother me," he lied, unconvincingly.

Mycroft sat on the edge of the bed, wagging his finger.

"Well, it wouldn't have been a little one. It would have been a very, very hard and long one, and you, baby boy, would have bawled your eyes out over my knee, like you always do when I mean it. I honestly don't know how you can be so stubborn in the face of a vicious riding crop, but become so silly about a walloping from my hand..."

"Sh'up! Mean brother!"

"And it would have been followed by the same from me," said Greg, pleasantly. Sherlock whimpered piteously and hid his face in his hands.

"And me,” chimed John. “Glad you’ve been thwarted, mate. If you think I'm sitting up with you holding an ice pack to your sore arse for another weekend, then you do not know Captain John Hamish Watson. Mind you, think we might both need a bloody ice pack later. Yeesh." He winced and rubbed at his striped and well-used backside.

“So I rather think it is I who win, Lockie. So there,” said the elder Holmes, supercilious beyond bearing.

Sherlock looked up indignantly. "Er, you still didn't extract a confession out of me! You only made me say I was susceptible to the Iceman, but you never broke my secret! You were too busy bringing me off because _you're_ susceptible to _me_! So you don't win at all, I do!" he shouted.

Mycroft's mouth opened and closed, as he realised he had absolutely no riposte to offer. He settled for a sardonic raising of an eyebrow and a little toss of the head as if to say 'it's beneath me to engage.'

Greg swiftly intervened, not liking the implications of this continual game of one-upmanship. Time to take back control, he thought.

"Don't come it all lofty, now, Mycie Holmes. You play nice with Little Brother. Doesn't do to let you get too above yourself, does it?"

Mycroft flushed at the sudden scrutiny and the ominous disapproving growl in Greg’s voice.

"Er… N-no, Gregory."

"No, who?"

"Sir. No, sir. Or Papa, or what you will,” replied Mycroft, giving his best manners an airing, relieved at not having to be the Iceman in the privacy of his own home any more.

Greg nudged the scowling Sherlock with his knee. "And you, you cocky little bleeder. No more winding him up. No more silly buggers. Keep your mitts off Mycie’s waistcoats. At least for another five years, right?"

"Mm-mn. Yes, Greg. Sir. Whatever," huffed Sherlock, flopping down to Greg's chest and resting his head on his shoulder.

Greg nodded with satisfaction. "Good. I’ve had enough of Spies, ta very much."

They lay motionless for some time, finally enjoying a bit of post-scene relaxation.

After a while, John broke the contented silence. "Myc, love... You were a bit too good at that, in there," he said, tentatively. "Haven't done it for real, have you?"

Mycroft sat up, appalled at the suggestion.

"Good Lord, Johnny, of course not! Such things and worse do go on in the wicked world, alas. But I have never contravened the Geneva Convention, put it that way. Nor have I coerced an informant or a traitorous agent to any sexual encounter, thank you. I'm not that man."

John nodded.

"I knew that really. Just, you know... You're a bit good."

Mycroft beamed at him flirtatiously. "Only for you, my dear."

"Glad to hear it," breathed Greg, suppressing a shudder as he recalled the reptilian blankness of the Iceman persona. Crucial to national security, of course. But he was buggered if he'd put up with it at home. He clapped his hands together once, startling a nicely dozing Sherlock, who grimaced up at him in protest. 

"Right, let’s get in the shower, the lot of us. Then we're all gonna help clear up that nonsense downstairs. And then, you escaped mental patients, we are going to have a sensible night in like normal bloody people - watch a bit of telly and eat some pasta, or something, all right?”

He sat up, shaking his head at them all with exaggerated scolding.

“Finally, a bit of sense,” giggled John.

Greg tutted.

“If I’m feeling generous later, you can show me how grateful and sweet you can be before I agree to any more of your nasty little schemes."

“Yes, Gregory.”

“’Kay, Greg.”

“Yep. Got it, mate.”

The Holmeses stirred themselves and loped out, nudging and shoving at each other, still fussing and bickering. Sherlock wrapped his arm around Mycroft’s waist as they went, sneakily undid his belt, and whipped his robe off in one smooth motion. Mycroft yelped, and the worthy adversaries ran nakedly to the bathroom, giggling like idiots - one cool, pale backside bobbing next to one hot, stripy one.

Greg leaned down and kissed his yawning lover's tawny hair, grinning fondly.

“Got to put them in their place, Johnnyboy, haven't I? Or they'll have us doing God knows what. Besides, everyone always underestimates the henchman. Iceman and Secret Agent, my arse. Kittens, the pair of 'em." He winked, roguishly, and went to reassert his authority in the shower.

John watched him stalk away, and lay back; sore and electrified, spent and challenged; relieved to be merely a Doctor, a Blogger, a Soldier - but not a Spy.

**Author's Note:**

> Lovely to hear from you, as it always is. If you made it to the end, thank you for reading. ;) x


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